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NEW STAR PAPERS ; 



OR, 



VIEWS AND EXPERIENCES 



OF 



RELIGIOUS SUBJECTS. 



HEN'S Y WARD BEECUER. 






NEW YORK: 

DERBY & JACKSON, 119 NASSAU STREET. 

1850. 







Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by 

HENRY WARD BEECHER, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of 
New York. 



Geo. Russell &, Co., 
Printers. 



Somekvii.i.e A: Brothkr, 
Binders. 



PREFACE. 



These papers are, for the most part, taken from the col- 
umns of the New York Independent. If unworthy of a book 
form, the Public has itself to blame, in part, for encouraging 
a like collection of Star Papers, some years ago. 

A few things have been added, from other sources. But 
little revision has been attempted, except in the case of those 
several articles which were not originally written, but re- 
ported or condensed for print, from sermons or lectures. 

Many persons may be tempted to read a short religious 

« 
article, who would never attempt a profound book. 

HENRY WARD BEECHER. 
Brooklyn, June 1, 1859. 



CONTENTS. 



«*•*■ 

Christ Knocking at the Door of the Soul, 


Page 
9 


Church Music, . 


*7 


Trust, ...... 


24 


Abide with Us, . 


28 


Thoughts for the Close of the Year, 


32 


God's Pity, . . . . 


3* 


The Mountain and the Closet, 


• 47 


The Liberty of Prayer, • ♦ 


• 54 


Faults in Prayer, . . • . 


. 60 


Aids to Prayer, . 


66 


Forsaking God, ...... 


70 


A Rhapsody of the Pen upon the Tongue, 


. 7 6 


An Aged Pastor's Return, 


80 


Lessons from the Times, . . 


. 86 


Christian Consolation, . . • ♦ 


■ 103 


Troubles, . 


109 


Phases of the Times, . . 


. 116 


Fullness of God, . 


. 124 


Christ in you, the Hope of Glory, 


• ! 35 


Prayer-meetings, . . . . 


. 141 


One Cause of Dull Meetings, . 


. 146 


Working out Our Own Salvation, 


. 151 



Vlll 



CONTENTS. 



Trust in God, 

We Spend our Years as a Tale that is Told, 

Sudden Conversion, 

" Total Depravity/' . 

Working with Errorists, 

Mischievous Self-Examination, 

Where Christians Meet, 

The Day and the Desk, 

Is Conversion Instantaneous ? 

Natural Laws and Special Providences, 

The Dead Christ, 

An Exposition, 

The Episcopal Service, 

Congregational Liturgy, 

Churches and Organs, . 

Patriotism and Liberty, 

Purity of Character, . 

How to bear little Troubles, 

" Sin Revived and I Died," 

Humility before God, . 

Who shall Help the Unfortunate ? 

Plymouth Church, 

Organ Playing, 

How to become a Christian, 

God's Witness to Christian Fidelity, 

The Progress of Christianity, . 

Duties of Religious Publishing Societies, 



VIEWS AO EXPERIENCES 



RELIGIOUS SUBJECTS. 



CHRIST KNOCKING AT THE DOOK OF THE SOUL. 

" Behold, I stand at the door, and knock; if any man hear my 
voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, 
and he with me." — Rev. iii. 20. 

This, in the highly figurative language of the Apoca- 
lypse, is a representation of the Human Soul and of 
Christ's endeavor in its behalf. It is" a favorite 
method of Scripture to represent man by the figure 
of a mansion, or building. Sometimes it is a temple. 
"Know ye not that ye are the temple of God?" 
As nothing was more criminal than to desecrate 
temples by bringing into them evil things, so it is 
criminal in the sight of God to desecrate that temple 
which he has made of man, by bringing into the mind 
thoughts and feelings that are corrupt and depraved. 
Sometimes the human soul is a tabernacle, or a tent. 
Man is represented as a tenant, or a dweller in a tab- 
ernacle ; and death is the striking of the tent — the tak- 
ing down of the tabernacle that the occupant may go 
free. Christ employed the same representation when 

1* -} 



10 CHRIST KNOCKING AT 

he said : "If a man love me, he will keep my words, 
and my father will love him, and we will come unto 
him, and make our abode with him :" This is as if 
one were to offer to take rooms in the soul, and to 
become a dweller therein, as people take rooms in a 
house and abide in it. All those passages of Scrip- 
ture which speak of indwelling, represent the same 
idea. A modification of it is found in the apostle's 
figure of building, and of the master-builder. This 
manner of speaking pervades the Bible, and the 
figure is appropriate and instructive. 

The soul is a dwelling of many apartments. Each 
sense, affection, sentiment, faculty, may be regarded 
as a separate room. And in one regard all men are 
alike ; they have the same number of rooms. No one 
has a single room less or more than another. In a 
material building, one man may have one room, an- 
other two, and another a score ; but, in the soul-house, 
all men have just exactly the same number of apart- 
ments. Yet there is a great difference between one 
man and another, in the size and furnishing, or in 
other words, in the contents, of these apartments. 
Some men are built like pyramids, exceeding broad 
at the base — or on the earthy side, and narrow and 
tapering as they go up — or heavenward. Their rooms 
are very large at the bottom of the house, but very 
small at the top. Other men are built substantially 
alike, from bottom to top, like a tower which is just 
as broad at its summit as at its foundation. 

But there is, in general, a great part of the struc- 
ture of evecy man that is not used, and remains 
locked up. And usually the best apartments are 



THE DOOR OF THE SOUL. 11 

the ones neglected. Those that have a glorious 
outlook, that stand up to sun and air, from whose 
windows one may look clear across Jordan, and 
see the fields and hills of the Promised Land — into 
these men seldom go. They choose rather to live 
in that part of the soul-house that looks into the back- 
yard, where nothing but rubbish is gathered and 
kept. Many men live in one or two rooms, out of 
thirty or forty in the soul. 

If you should take a candle — that is, God's Word, 
which is as a lighted candle — and go into these soul- 
houses, and explore them, you would find them, gen- 
erally, very dark. The halls and passage-ways, the 
stairs of ascent, the vast and noble ranges of apart- 
ments — all are stumbling dark. There, for example, 
is the apartment, or faculty, called Benevolence. 
You can tell by the way the door grates, that it is 
seldom opened. But if you were to thrust in a light, 
you would see that the room is a most stately place. 
The ceilings are frescoed with angels. The sides and 
panels are filled with the most exquisite adornments. 
The whole saloon is most inviting to every sense. 
Seats there are, delightful to press ; and the niches are 
filled with things enticing to the eye. But spiders 
cover over with their webs the angels of the ceiling. 
Dust blackens the ornaments. The hall is silent, the 
chambers are neglected. The man of the house does 
not live in this room ! 

Turn to another ; it is called Conscience. It is 
an apartment wonderfully constructed. It seems 
to be central. It is connected with every other 
apartment in the dwelling. On examination, how- 



12 CHRIST KNOCKING AT 

ever, it will be found that, for the most part, the 
doors are all locked. The floor is thick with dust 
The dust is its carpet. The room is very dark. 
The windows are glazed over with webbed dirt. 
The light is shut out, and the whole apartment is 
dismal. The man who owns the house does not fre- 
quent this room ! 

There is another chamber called Hope — if haply 
you can see the inscription over the door. It has 
two sides, and two windows. From one of these 
you may see the stars, the heaven beyond, the Holy 
City, the Angels of God, the General Assembly and 
Church of the First-born. This is shut ! The other 
window looks out into the World's Highway, and 
sees men, caravans, artificers, miners, artisans, en- 
gineers, builders, bankers, brokers, pleasure-mon- 
gers. That window stands wide open, and is much 
used ! 

The room called Faith is shut, and the lock rusted. 
It is lifted up above all others, and rests, like a crys- 
tal-dome observatory, upon the top of the dwelling. 
But its telescope is unmounted — its implements all 
gone to waste ! The chamber of "Worship is silent, 
unused, unvisited, dark and cheerless. 

Indeed, in those upper and nobler apartments, 
on which the sun rests all the day long, from 
which all sweet and i pleasant prospects rise, to 
which are wafted the sweetest sounds that ever 
charm the ear, and the sweetest odors that ever fall 
from celestial gardens, around about which angels 
are hovering — these are, in most soul-houses, all 
shut and desolate ! 



THE DOOR OF THE SOUL. 13 

But if you go into the lower ranges, you shall 
find occupancy there, yet with various degrees of 
inconvenience and misery. ' If you listen, you shall 
hear in some rioting and wassail. The passions 
never hold Lent ; they always celebrate carnival ! 
In others, you shall hear sighs and murmurs. The 
dwellers therein are disappointed, restless desires, 
crippled and suffering wishes, bed-ridden ambitions ! 
In others you shall hear weepings and repinings ; 
in others, storms and scoldings ; in others, there are 
sleep and stupidity ; in others, toil and trouble ; in 
others, weariness and disgust of life. 

You would be apt, from these sights and sounds, 
to think that you were in an ill-kept hospital. The 
wards are filled with sad cases. Here and there, if you 
enter unadvisedly, you shall find awful filth. You 
shall even come upon stark corpses — for there is not 
a soul that does not number, among its many cham- 
bers, at least one for a charnel-house in which 
Darkness and Death abide ! It is a dreadful thing 
for a man to be enlightened so as to see his feelings, 
passions, sins, crimes, thoughts and desires, motives 
and imaginations, as God sees them ! It is a dread- 
ful thing to go about from room to room, and see 
what a place the soul is! How unlighted and 
gloomy ! How waste and unused ! How shut and 
locked ! And where it is open and used, how des- 
ecrated and filthy ! 

Now, it is to the door of such a house — to the 
human soul with such passages and chambers — thai 
Christ comes / To such a dwelling, he comes and 
knocks for entrance ! We can imagine the steps of 



14 CHRIST KNOCKING AT 

a good man coming to houses that are nothing but 
habitations of wretchedness, to places of misery and 
infamy, to jails and houses of correction. But none 
of these can convey a lively impression of the grace 
and condescension of God, in coming to the doors of 
the soul-houses of men, and knocking to be admitted 
into their darkness, squalidness and misery ! For it 
is not because they are beautiful that God comes, 
or because he is mistaken about their condition, 
or thinks them better than they are. It is because 
He knows the darkness and the emptiness of some ; 
the abuses and misery in others ; the rioting and 
desecration in others. And to all he comes to 
bring light for darkness, cleansing for foulness, fur- 
niture for emptiness, and order for confusion ! He 
comes to turn the rusted locks, and to open the closed 
doors of every chamber — to let men up into every 
part of themselves — and to fill the whole dwelling of 
the soul, from foundation to dome, with light and 
gladness, with music and singing, with joy and re- 
joicing! 

"Behold I stand at -the door and Jcnoch" 
Christ comes to the soul-house, and stands there 
and knocks. On getting no answer, he goes away 
only to come and knock again. He waits at the 
door, and listens for a voice within, and goes away. 
He comes again, and waits, and goes away ! He 
knocks, not at one door, but goes round to every 
door, and waits for an answer. As one who returns 
to his dwelling in the night, after a journey, and 
finding it locked, knocks at the accustomed door 
of entrance in the front, and getting no answer goes 



THE DOOR OF THE SOUL. 15 

to the door in the rear, then to the side door — 
if there be one — and then to every other door, in 
order, if possible, to get into his house ; so Christ, 
who longs to enter into the soul, goes to every door 
in succession, and knocks, and listens for an invita- 
tion to come in, and leaves not one chamber in the 
soul-house unsought, or one door untried ! He knocks 
at the door of Reason ; at the door of Fear ; at the 
door of Hope ; at the door of Imagination and 
Taste, of Benevolence and Love, of Conscience, of 
Memory and Gratitude ! He does not neglect a sin- 
gle one ! 

Beginning at the upper and the noblest, where he 
ought to come in as a King of Glory, through 
gates of triumph, he comes round and down to 
the last and lowest, and retreats wistfully and re- 
luctantly, returning often — morning, noon, and 
night — continually seeking entrance, with marvel- 
ous patience, accepting no refusal, repulsed by no 
indifference to his presence, and no neglect of his 
message ! 

If he be admitted, joy unspeakable is in the house, 
and shall be henceforth. The dreary dwelling is 
filled with light from the brightness of his counte- 
nance, and every chamber is perfumed from the fra- 
grance of his garments. Peace and hope, love and 
joy, abide together in the house — for Christ himself 
takes up his abode therein. But if, after his long 
knocking at the door and patient waiting for entrance, 
his solicitation be refused or neglected, by and by 
there shall come a time when you who have denied 
him, shall be denied of him. For when you shall 



16 CHRIST KNOCKING AT THE DOOR OF THE SOUL. 

knock at the gate of heaven for admittance into the 
mansions which he has prepared from the foundation 
of the world, he will say unto you, as you said 
unto him, Depart ! But that dreadful day has not 
yet come, and he still stands at the door — his locks 
wet with the dews of the morning — and waits to be 
invited into the chamber of your soul. Hear his 
voice once more, and yield to its gentle persuasion : 
" Behold, I stand at the door and knock ; if any 
man hear my voice, and open the door, I will 
come into him, and will sup with him, and he with 
me /" 



CHUKCH MUSIC. 

It is probable that music, since the world began, 
has been employed to express religions feeling. It 
has great power to excite that feeling. It may be 
questioned whether hymns and music do not divide 
power with preaching. If the sources of popular 
religious doctrinal knowledge could be examined, it 
is suspected that the hymn and psalm would be found 
to be the real sermon, and singing the most effectual 
preaching. 

It is very certain that strong religious feelings in- 
cline men to the use of singing. And the apostle 
prescribes psalms, hymns and spiritual songs as a 
means both of gaining and of expressing religious 
feeling. 

Keligious reformations seem always to have de- 
veloped singing. Under Luther's administration, 
and Calvin's government, singing became so general 
and characteristic that psalm-singing and the Protest- 
ant heresy were synonymous terms. The great refor- 
mation under the Wesleys was marked by the outburst 
of religious music. In the revivals of New England, 
not far from the same period, there was as marked a 
revival in singing as in religion. Indeed, so full were 
the young 'converts of song, that they went to and 

IT 



18 CHURCH MUSIC. 

returned from church with the voice of psalms and 
hymns ; and President Edwards devotes a special chap- 
ter, in his account of the religious history of that 
period, to a justification of this practice, against those 
who unduly censured it. 

Whenever revivals of religion visit communities,- 
their presence is attested by new zeal in singing. 
And it is to be noticed, also, that not only is the 
spirit of singing revived, but, as with a common 
instinct, all exhibitory music is dropped as dead or 
sapless, and the heart feels after hymns of deep 
emotion, and after tunes which are born of the heart, 
and not of the head. Revival melodies are but 
another name for tunes that express strong feeling. 
It is quite remarkable how a congregation, in times 
of spiritual coldness and musical propriety, will tole- 
rate only classical music, or those tunes which the 
reigning musical pedants of the day favor. The 
choir sings as clocks strike, with mechanical accu- 
racy, and with the warmth and enthusiasm of a 
clock. But as soon as a congregation are really 
brought together under the power of a common 
earnest religious feeling, away go the cold and for- 
mal tunes ; and wild airs, plaintive melodies, or 
passionate and imploring tunes, take their place 
without regret or a thought of musical dignity and 
propriety. 

But though music holds so high a place of power, 
and is susceptible of such beneficent effects, it is 
doubtful whether it is not the most troublesome 
thing in the whole administration of public worship. 
It would seem as if the history of music were but 



CHURCH MUSIC. 19 

the history of continual expedients. Churches are 
undergoing perpetual musical revolutions. There 
do not seem to be any principles which are known 
and recognized, and which underlie musical admin- 
istrations in our churches, and give them unity and 
efficiency. The Roman and the Episcopal services 
incorporate music with their service, congruously and 
harmoniously with the whole system of worship. 
The skill or efficiency of musical execution may 
vary; but this never affects the basis upon which 
music stands. 

But with our other churches there does not seem 
to be any musical stability whatever. There is hardly 
anywhere a deep and controlling feeling that music is 
at all a religious act. It is but a religious embellish- 
ment at the best. Churches that have choirs wish 
they had none. They that have none wish they ha i 
a choir — until they get it. A large choir falls into 
confusion very easily. It is too unwieldy to be kept 
up without great labor, time, and expense ; and 
thus it is an open magazine, subject to explosion at 
any moment. If the clumsiness of a large choir is 
got rid of by substituting a quartette, the church 
usually rids itself of discord and of religious feeling 
at the same time. The quartette is professional. 
Skill is the criterion. Music exhibits itself; but it 
never exhibits religious truth. Four singers in the 
gallery forbid anybody to sing in the pew. One might 
as well talk in sermon-time as to sing in singing-time, 
when a quartette is performing. I do not say that 
four persons could not be deeply religious, and sing 
so as to edify the Christian congregation. But I do 



20 CHURCH MUSIC. 

say, that four persons who are musically gifted to a 
degree that fits them to perform the singing, are not 
easily found, and when found, are seldom under the 
control of deep religious feeling. Experience shows 
that trained singers, worldly, and religiously indiffer- 
ent, constitute the greatest number of quartette 
choirs. 

As music grows less robust, and more and more 
cold, as it becomes more and more " classical," a 
revolution takes place. It is determined to have con- 
gregational singing. It is not asked whether there 
is any congregational feeling, or whether the church 
is only a caravansary of one hundred and fifty 
separate pews, with separate families, in separate 
circles of life, anxiously keeping themselves clear of 
improper social connection with each other. It is 
not asked whether there is any common religious 
feeling that demands a common channel of expres- 
sion. It is not considered whether or not the church 
has been trained to feel, act, or work together, or 
whether the members hang like icicles upon the eaves, 
united only by being frozen together. 

Congregational singing must either spring from 
a common religious life in the church, or it must 
lead to it / or else it will not long live at all. 

But, in multitudes of cases, congregational music 
flourishes only while it is a novelty. A leader is 
appointed. The choir is got rid of with unnecessary 
dispatch, and the best voices, perhaps, in the congre- 
gation are mortified and offended. Good tunes are to 
be sung. Slow tunes are supposed to be very pious. 
Very slow and very solemn tunes are used. For a few 



CHURCH MUSIC. 21 

Sundays all goes well. But first the young people 
are dissatisfied. It is very dull and most unmusical 
to them. But it is the voices of the young that 
always must give power to congregational singing. 
As they fall off, the sound grows thin and meager. 
A wet day, or the leader sick, leaves the decorous 
congregation to a mortifying experience of ludicrous 
failure. In a year, at most, the experiment ends. 
It was begun without knowledge, and ended as it 
begun. It was a caprice, an expedient, a reaction of 
disgust from choir-singing. 

A new choir is inaugurated, a new leader, a new 
dispensation of ambitious display, of musical sensi- 
tiveness, of quarrelling and disgust, of revolution 
and quartette, until at length, in some congregations, 
all that any one hopes or dreams of is, singing that 
shall not damage all the rest of worship. In other 
churches, having lost every vestige of sanctity, 
music is regarded outright as one of those forms of 
moral amusement in which men may indulge with- 
out sin, in the church, and on the Sabbath ; and they 
plunge their hands into their pockets and pay for 
professional singing. Then King David finds him- 
self in the hands of the Philistines. The unwashed 
lips that all the week sang the disgustful words of 
glorious music in operas, now sing the rapture of 
the old Hebrew bard, or the passion of the suffering 
Redeemer, with all the inspiration of vanity and 
brandy. "When the exquisite mockery is done, and 
the opera-glasses are all closed, the audience close 
their eyes too, and the sermon proceeds. Thus, 



22 CHURCH MUSIC. 

music, apostatizing from piety, is no longer a hea- 
venly bird, but a peacock, that struts and flares her 
gaudy plumes for admiration ! 

The loss of positive good is not the whole mischief 
of this state of things. This false singing dese- 
crates whatever it touches. The hymns which are 
used are killed. They become suggestive of drawl- 
ing discords, or of pedantic accuracy and dullness, 
or of ostentatious trill and shake, or of quarrels and 
troubles. The divine flavor goes out of them, and 
they lie sapless and dry. And thus music, that 
should nurse hymns upon its bosom, ab.uses them, 
like a cruel step-mother, and thrusts them away. 
Hundreds of hymns have been served worse than 
Herod served the innocents — for he killed them out- 
right; but a hymn cursed by musical associations, 
cannot die, but creeps aside like a crippled bird, to 
hide its wounds in a songless covert, until time heal- 
ing them, gives them wing and song again ! 

Meanwhile, only those who are unblessed with 
musical taste are happy. The most gifted are the 
greatest sufferers. The pastor sees constantly recur- 
ring quarrels in the congregation. One by one good 
men attempt to do something ; but being caught in a 
passionate musical eddy, and whirled about for a 
time, disgusted and irritated, they get upon the 
shore, with a solemn vow never to meddle with music 
again. 

So deeply are some good men impressed with the 
mischief of music, that not a few, and those who 
aforetime have been leaders in musical matters, seri- 



CHURCH MUSIC. 23 

ously ponder whether religion would not gain by the 
utter exclusion of music from the church ! 

Are trouble and music twin brothers ? Is there no 
way of edification through music, or must we regard 
and endure it as a necessary evil ? 



TKUST. 

A child has an exalted idea of the knowledge and 
power of its parent. A father stands in a child's 
mind as the type of courage and capacity ; and a 
mother, of love and goodness. The feeling of trust is 
perfect. Children do not think about their own sup- 
port, or their own manifold wants. There is an inex- 
haustible certainty that everything will be thought 
of, sought, and procured by their parents for to-day, 
to-morrow, next week, the month, and the whole year. 
!Nor does sickness or trouble diminish this feeling. 
It then grows even stronger. Trouble sends the 
child right home to the parental bosom. 

It is this experience that God employs to desig- 
nate the relations of confidence and implicit trust 
that should exist between every human heart and 
Christ. The earthly parent succeeds very poorly in 
reproducing love, care, kindness, foresight, provi- 
dence. He is trying to do, on a small scale, in a nar- 
row nature, in a sinful world, what God does glori- 
ously, in an infinite sphere, with a perfect nature, 
and with transcendent excellence. God is unlike an 
earthly father, but it is on the side of excess, abun- 
dance, profusion. He cares not less, but infinitely 
more, for every child, than any earthly parent ever 
can. He watches more willingly, provides more 
surely, gladly, and abundantly. 

24 






TRUST. 25 

But few Christians, however, reproduce the feel- 
ing of children towards a parent in respect to trust 
They believe in God upon visible evidence. Pros- 
perity makes them trustful. Trouble leaves them 
without a ray of quiet light. Men trust in God 
when they are in health, in strength, when successful 
in their affairs, or when surrounded by all that heart 
can wish. When sick, alone, baffled in their business, 
vexed and troubled, hemmed in and shut up, they 
fall away from confidence, and go into despair. 

You can leave your affairs to God when they go 
well; can you when they go ill? You can rest 
quietly in God's hands when you are in health ; can 
you when sick ? You can trust your family w T ith 
God when you are comfortable and happy ; can you 
when you are perplexed how to get along, and your 
children are sick, and long sick ? 

But what is a trust in God good for that departs 
when you need it, and comes again only when you 
can get along without it ? What is a ship good for 
that is safe in a harbor but unsafe on the ocean? 
What is a sail good for that is sound in a calm, but 
splits in the first wind ? What patience is that 
which only lasts when there is nothing to bear? 
Courage, when there is no danger ; firmness, where 
is no pressure ; hope when everything is before the 
eyes ; what are all these worth ? But such is 
the trust which most Christians have in God. It 
has no virtue in it. It is like a lighthouse that 
burns only in daylight, and is extinguished at sun- 
down. 

We need a trust that shall take hold upon God 

2 



26 TRUST. 

witli such a large belief of his love and constancy, 
as shall carry us right on over rough as well as over 
smooth ground; right on through light and dark- 
ness; right on through sickness, bereavement, loss, 
trouble, and long-pressing afflictions. At noon one 
does not need a torch. It is in darkness that one 
should carry a light. Sometimes God communicates 
his goodness to us through our worldly conditions. 
Every day and every hour seem mails from heaven 
bringing letters of divine remembrance and tokens 
of love. But, at other times, God prefers other 
channels. He chooses to approach us by other in- 
struments. A Christian should understand that 
every experience contains the love and presence of 
Christ. God wears many robes. He comes in new 
apparel. Whatever change takes place, it is only 
God in another dress. A Christian should learn to 
look at the face and not at the dress. If your father 
or your mother came to you, you would know them 
by the eye, by the mouth, by the expression, no 
matter how strangely they were dressed. "We should 
feel mortified to find that a dear friend did not 
enough know us to carry the firm trust of friendship 
through all our moods and changes of appear- 
ance. 

It will be a help towards this state, if every Christ- 
ian will reckon with himself in a manner exactly 
the reverse of that usually practised. 

Count for nothing that which you feel in hours of 
glee or prosperity. Consider that only to be genuine 
trust in God which you have in hours of darkness. 
Begin there. Put your criterion and standard 



TRUST. 27 

there. If you have none there, yon have none at 
any time. 

" Although the figtree shall not blossom, neither 
shall fruit be in the vines / the labor of the olive 
shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat / the 
flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall 
be no herd in the stalls ; YET, will I rejoice in the 
Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation" 



ABIDE WITH US. 

Even a glance of the sun is cheering, in a day of 
storms, or of clouds, which, without storming, fill the 
air with sullenness, and make twilight even at noon- 
day. But what is this compared with the brightness 
of the unobstructed sun all the day long, filling the air 
above, overlaying the earth, and pouring gold upon 
every tree, stone, or house, until the eye shrinks for 
very brightness ! 

But the sunlight of a single day brings forth 
nothing. Such days come in December, in January, 
and amid the boisterous weeks of February, and the 
tumult of March. But nothing springs up. The 
tree makes no growth. The light does not enter 
in. It lies wide abroad, indeed most beautiful, but 
nothing is created by it ; for burnished icicles and frost- 
drops are the only stems and flowers which come from 
the slant and cold brightness of the winter's sun. 

It is only when, at length, the sun returns from its 
equatorial pilgrimage, and enters into the earth, and 
abides within it, that life is awakened. The earth 
knows his coming. In winter, nature lies as if 
dead. The sun stretches itself upon it, as did the 
prophet upon the woman's son, and from every 
part there is resurrection of root, stem, bud, and 
flower. But none of these things happen to casual 
and infrequent shining. They are the fruit of 

28 



1BIDE WITH US. 29 

indwelling lieat. ISTot till the sun enters in, and 
abides in the soil, not till days and nights are struck 
through with warmth, is there life and glory. 

If this be so of the lower physical nature, how much 
more eminently it is true of the human soul, and of its 
Sun of Righteousness ! It is a gladsome thing in toil 
and trouble, to have a single bright flash from the face 
of God. A prisoner in a dungeon may have but one 
small window, and that far up, and out of the way of 
the sun, while for months and months not one single 
day does the yellow sun send one single and solitary 
ray through the poor little window. But at length, 
in changing its place in the heavens, there comes a 
day in which, to his surprise and joy, a flash of light 
springs through and quivers on the wall. It vibrates 
upon his heart still more tremulously than on the 
wall. Even thus much gives joy. It warms nothing, 
and lights but little ; but it brings back sum- 
mer to his soul. It tells him that the sun is not 
dead, but walks the heavens yet. That single ray 
speaks of fields, of trees, of birds, and of the whole 
blue heavens ! So is it, often, in life. It is in the 
power of one blessed thought, in a truly Christian 
heart, to send light and joy for hours and days. But 
that is not enough. It is not enough for Christian 
growth, or Christian nourishment, that despondency 
sometimes hopes, and darkness sometimes smiles into 
light. A Christian is to be a child of light, and to 
dwell in the light. The whiteness of heavenly robes is 
the light which they reflect from the face of God. A 
Christian is to bear much fruit. This he cannot, un- 
less he abides in summer. For mere relief, even a 



30 ABIDE WITH US. 

casual visit of God's grace is potential. But for 
fruit — much fruit, and ripened fruit — nothing will 
suffice but the whole summer's sun. 

Now this steadfastness of God's presence is both to 
be prayed for, and to be possessed. There is pro- 
vision in the Gospel for this very blessing. It is the 
promise of the Father, and the pledge of the Son. 
It is made to be a Christian's duty to pray for it and 
to expect it. For, in very deed, there can be no true 
and full Christian ripeness without it. The soul 
forms no habits, and comes to no spiritual conformity 
to God, by the jets and flashes of excitement. These 
have their use, and are to be gladly accepted. But 
the soul must lie long in the light ; it must abide in 
divine warmth. There must be spiritual summer 
where there is to be much fruit. Oar thoughts are 
like our bodies ; men cannot come to good breeding 
by an occasional entrance into good society. It is 
habitual commerce with grace and amenity that 
fashions a man to politeness. It is living in studious 
habits that makes a man learned. And even more, it 
is abiding in God, and having the indwelling of God 
with us, that bring the soul to good manners and 
in divine things. 

It seems an impossible thing, to many, to carry the 
presence and influence of the Spirit of God through 
all the whirl and occupation of life. Is it impossible 
for a young soldier to carry the spirit of love with 
him, through camp, march, and battle ? Is it diffi- 
cult for the parent to carry his soul full of domestic 
affections through the business of the day? Is it 
impossible, or even difficult for us to carry within us 



A.BIDE WITH US. 31 

any feeling which is deep and strong, and which we 
love, in spite of exterior disturbance? 

Nay, do we not see every day that the heart, by 
such enthusiasms or deep emotions, not only goes un- 
changed through burdensome life, but casts out of it- 
self a flood of radiance, and makes its path light by 
its own cheerfulness or joy? Love in the soul is 
like perfume in the garments. Heat cannot melt 
it, nor cold freeze it, nor the winds blow it away. 
Going forth or coming home, it scatters itself but is 
not wasted ; it is forever going but never gone. And 
the love of God shed abroad in the soul surpasses all 
fragrance, in inexhaustible diffusiveness. If men 
have only a little love, an occasional spark, it may be 
troublesome to nourish it when the world casts down 
on it green fuel. A large fire waxes'larger by that 
very wind which blows out a small flame. It is even 
as St. Peter saith : " If these things be in you, and 
abound, they make you that ye shall neither be bar- 
ren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord 
Jesus Christ." 



THOUGHTS FOR THE CLOSE OF THE YEAR. 

As there is something piquant and memorable in 
the novelty of first experience, so there is something 
sad, and even solemn, in the view of last times. 
And yet, the two antitheses in a man's own life, his 
birth and his death, are usually without experience 
or consciousness. Birth and death are alike blind 
and insensible. The first two years leave almost 
nothing to memory. Then come only a few clusters 
for the memory. We are five or six years in the 
world before we have brain enough, and nerve 
enough to receive durable impressions. And, look- 
ing the other way/%y far the greatest number of 
people die without apparent pain, without mental 
sensibility — apparently as little conscious of failing 
life as flowers are of tlie loss of their petals, when 
ripeness plucks them one by one. 

But it is a very different experience that we have, 
when in full manhood — in strength, vigor, nerve, we 
take record, day by day, of change ; passing from 
some things forever, entering upon some, and pal- 
pitating with various emotions — sadness for the past 
or hope for the future ! 

But, as one may carelessly read a book and fail of 
half its meaning ; as one may but glance at a picture 
and perceive not half its beauty ; as one may part 
from a traveling acquaintance almost without any 
insight; so the periods and events of our life are 



THOUGHTS FOR THE CLOSE OF THE YEAR. 33 

irregularly dealt with. We glance off from events 
before we see even a tithe of their meaning ; we 
hasten on to new things without reading yet more 
valuable lessons in the old. Should such things 
be put in a book as are happening to each of us 
every day, we should hang over the chapters as if a 
strange enchantment possessed us. 

Let us redeem some thoughts from the past. Let 
us call up its shadows. Let us pass the events again 
before us, and pour upon them the light of sober 
reflection. 

When speaking of the end of time, we do not 
reflect that it is ending every day, every hour. 
While we are looking forward to the close of our his- 
tory, we neglect to look back and perceive that o«.r 
history has been a series of closings ; that the past is 
heaped up and crowded full of things — left, ended, 
finished forever. 

All the periods of time which have appeared days 
and years to us, are as effectually ended as they 
will be at God's last day, when the angel shall lift up 
his hand and swear before him that liveth forever 
and ever that time shall be no more. 

Tell me, what can you remember, and what recite, 
of your first five years ? They are gone without a 
trace. To you the time is not only gone, but it left 
you almost without a remembrance. 

Of the next five years, how much can you recount ? 
A glancing thing, here and there, is reproducible in 
your thought. But the years — the years — they are 
rolled away, died out, and gone as have the clouds 
of last summer ! 

2* 



34 THOUGHTS FOB THE CLOSE OF THE YEAR. 

Then, year followed year. They came, grew, orbed 
to the full, waned, died, and went like shadows! 
Years that wrought upon you like eternity — whose 
marks you will carry forever, dissolved and passed 
like drops of dew. One by one, years are dead — 
twenty — thirty — forty — fifty — eighty ! Go to the 
shore and call them. They shall not hear you, nor 
obey ! Were they good, were they evil — were they 
misspent and poorly used ? Nothing can retouch 
their period, nor add to their record. Is it a solemn 
consideration to look forward to that time when 
you shall stand on the brink of life, and look back 
on all your years ? It is a great deal more affect- 
ing to you to stand in the freshness of youth, or mid- 
life, and look back upon what years are gone ! They 
are registered and judged ! Not when God's judg- 
ment-day dawns will they be more fixed and judged, 
than they are already ! 

Not only is there room for solemn thought in the 
larger periods of time, but there is something 
affecting in the subdivisions of time. Every Satur- 
day evening has, to my ear, a gentle knell. The 
week tolls itself away — one, two, three, four, five, 
six, and the perfect seven — and I can almost hear 
the sound dying away as if days had slipped their 
cables, and were drifting down the stream, but 
beating faint measures as they recede ! And of 
every one, I may say — ended ! gone ! I shall see thee 
no more ! 

Days likewise have some voice in dying. They 
scowl and shut down drearily sometimes, but 
oftener die in gorgeous apparel. As the sun 



THOUGHTS FOR THE CLOSE OF THE YEAR. 35 

stoops in the west, passes the horizon and is gone, 
I hear no audible voice. The scene speaks to the 
soul, as no voice may to the ear — "The day is 
gone — forever." No temple was ever builded as 
some days are — of w r ondrous deeds, of strange 
thoughts, of marvelous fancies, of deep feelings, of 
strange experiences. All the frescoes upon the 
Vatican are not so wonderful as those which our 
experience paints upon single days — that move on to 
the horizon, sink and go to the bottom, with all that 
they have ! 

In like manner it is with seasons — the promise 
of spring — the flush of summer — the fulfillment 
of autumn, and the year's long sleep — winter ! 
Each of them goes, w^ith a gradual and lingering 
step — so that we cannot remark their exit; and 
we only know their departure after they have gone. 
Memory may glean them, but never renew. Upon 
the future Ave cast hopes — but none upon the past ! 
Upon the future we throw good resolutions of 
amendment — but none upon the past. Upon the 
future we cast a fertile fancy, and fill it with thick 
deeds ; but the past — upon that we cast only sighs 
or tears, or faint joys — faint as dried flowers are fra- 
grant of the summer that is gone ! 

But how much more marked are the completions 
of experiences — the era of early youth, the begin- 
nings of things whose endings are with us yet ; the 
seeds whose stalks are yet growing ; the foundations 
upon whose walls we are still building ! We can 
look back to days of sorrow that gathered as clouds 
for storms — that rained and drenched us; that 



36 THOUGHTS FOR THE CLOSK OF THE YEAK 

threatened to overwhelm us ; that passed and forever , 
left us, and now lie in memory, rounded out and com- 
pleted things. 

How many hopes, born, ripened, perished ? How 
many fears that quivered, struck — like harmless 
lightnings in summer evenings — and ended! How 
many aspirations that flew, soaring high, till the 
head was dizzy with height ! How many loves 
lighted the path of those who are gone, while the 
love shines on, like sepulchral lamps, fed by the 
living to cast their faithful light upon the ashes of 
those that are for earth no more. 

How, when the whole reality comes back to us, do 
we stand struck with wonder at the deeds done — the 
events accomplished, the experiences ripened, the 
transitions completed ? Of our youthful companions 
how many are with us yet? What part of old 
companionship is left? If the schoolroom, where 
we used to sit, should be again filled with the former 
scholars, how many would sit there as spirits, and 
how many in body ? Of our childhood home, how 
many would come to our summons in shadow, and 
how many in substance? How, as we advance in 
life — the past gathers treasures. "What a magazine of 
things ended, laid up, perfected ! 

In the softened mood of such thoughts, how well 
it is for us to employ the last days of the year in 
solemn reflections. How wise it is to make an 
estimate of our own place, our character, our pros- 
pects ! 

Another year is gone. Before we enter the 
next, let us reckon with ourselves earnestly and 



THOUGHTS FOR THE CLOSE OF THE YEAR. 37 

honestly, what the old year has done for ns and 
with us. And should it be our last year, let us 
make such timely preparation, that at whatever 
hour the summons comes, we may depart gladly, 
rise with triumph, and take hold of immortality in 
Heaven. 



GOD'S PITY. 

" Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them 
that fear him." — Ps. ciii. 13. 

How strange it seems, to fall upon such a wonder- 
ful lyric as is this psalm of David, singing to us outot 
the rude ages of the past, where we naturally 
expect harshness and severity ! How wonderful that 
Our Age should go back to this old warrior to learn 
tenderness ! — that the most exquisite views of divine 
compassion should spring forth from the world's 
untrained periods, from Moses, the shepherd and 
legislator of the Desert, and from David, the sweet 
ginger of Israel, whose hand was mightiest among 
the mighty, whether laid upon the strings of the 
bow or of the harp ! 

Noble old warrior! Thou didst send dismay to 
thine enemies, and breathe joy among thy friends. 
Thy bow abode in strength, and thine arrows were 
terrible in the day of battle. v -But those silver shafts 
of song, from a lyre surpassing the fabled sweetness 
of Apollo's have sped through the dusky years, 
through thousands of them, and are flying yet ; not 
for wounding, but for life and healing. 

If we remember the times of David, we shall be 
no less surprised at the ripeness of the views of God, 
which he gives, their symmetry and all-sided ness, 



v god's pity. 39 

gentle without moral weakness, and strong without 
harshness ; building up the divine glory in justice 
and truth, and walling it about with majesty and sta- 
bility. But then, as in a garden inclosed with 
mighty walls, oh Psalmist, thou didst cover the 
bosom of God with flowers and fruits, and make 
the thought of Him sweeter to the fainting soul 
than all the breath of flowers, or sound of cooling 
waters ! 

As but a few years intervened between the era of 
David and of Homer, not the measure of a man's 
lifetime, it is interesting to observe the views which 
they held, synchronously, of the character of God. 
While David was filling Jerusalem with these match- 
less lyrics, Homer, the blind wanderer of Greece, 
whom the world has since made a universal citizen, 
was singing of the Grecian gods. If any one would 
know the glory of the Hebrew bard, let him contrast 
the psalms of David with Homeric representations of 
God. How could Greece be so dark when such a 
star shone over Mount Zion ? How could Olympus 
be so mean while Sinai flamed with such grandeur ? 
Living in the same day, a thousand years of religion 
divided them. Our hearts decide in a moment which 
was the true prophet, and the teacher of the true 
God! 

Let us select from David's chants but the single 
strain — GocPs Pity. 

Pity is a mode or particular development of bene- 
volence. It is sympathy for persons on account of 
weakness or suffering. It is not mere compassion, 
but is mingled with a desire to aid and relieve. 



40 god's pity. 

Pity and compassion are the antitheses of those 
affections by which we take hold of men who are 
good, lovely, desirable for their grace of nobleness 
and purity ; or of those who are prosperous, strong, 
and happy. For such, to be sure, we have a lively 
sympathy, but it is of a different sort. God has 
gladness for those who are glad, and pity for those 
who are sad. 

The pity of God, as disclosed in this psalm, is the 
working out of the whole divine nature of ( goodness 
toward the human family, in their unformed, imma- 
ture, sinful, struggling existence. The race was not 
born perfect — men were sown as seeds are. They 
come of germs, turn to leaves, shoot forth a slender 
stem, grow little by little to branches, and find firm- 
ness and solidity only after a long probation of weak- 
ness, temptation, sin, and all its sorrows. This is 
tiue of individual men. It is true historically of 
mankind. The need of compassion for the race has 
been just as great as is the need in every household 
of compassion towards babes and young children. 
It is still the need of each man and of the whole 
world. 

As much crime as there is, calling for punish- 
ment ; as much deliberate wrong, to be met by de- 
liberate justice; as much license as there is, and 
overflowing passion and desolating lust — there is 
even more ignorance, mistake, sorrowful weakness, 
and unwitting evil ! The world wanders like a half- 
grown orphan, calling for aid without answer, and 
weeps for trouble and wanders still, stumbling 
through ages! And though it needs reproof and 



god's pity. 41 

it needs kindness more. Though! it 
needs the grasp of the strong hand, it needs, too, the 
open palm of love and tenderness. It requires pun- 
ishment ; but it needs pity even more than avenging 
justice. 

While, therefore, the divine character drawn in the 
Bible hath great depth of shadow in justice, all its 
salient points stand forth in the high lights of love 
and mercy ! God is full of near, real, overflowing, 
and inexhaustible compassion for man ! 

But, it is declared that God's pity is not simply 
pity — it is a fathers pity. 

If a man be found weltering by the road, wounded, 
and a stranger comes who never before had even seen 
him, he will pity him. No matter if born under a 
different heaven, or speaking a different tongue, or 
worshipping at a different altar, he pities him ; for 
the heart of man speaks one language the world over, 
and suffering wakes compassion. 

But if, instead of being a stranger it were a near 
neighbor, how much more and more tender the pity, 
as he ran to his help. But if, instead of one who 
stood only in the offices of general and neighborhood 
kindness, it were a strong personal friend — yea, a 
brother — how much more intense would be the throb- 
bing emotion of tendernesk and pity ! 

But all these fade away before the wild outcry of 
the man's own father, who would give his life for his 
son, and who gives pity, now, not by measure, but 
with such a volume that it is as if a soul were gush- 
ing out in all its life ! 

But the noblest heart on earth is but a trickling 



42 god's pity. 

stream from a faint and wasting fountain, compared 
with the ineffable soul and heart of God, the ever- 
lasting father ! The pity of God is like a father's, in 
all that is tender, strong, and full, but not in scope 
and power. For every one of God's feelings moves 
in the sphere of the infinite. His pity has all the 
scope and divinity which belong to power, wisdom, 
justice ! Yea, power, wisdom, and justice are God's 
lesser ways, and come towards that side of his being 
where there would be restriction, if anywhere ; 
while love and mercy are God's peculiar glory. In 
these he finds the most glorious liberty of the divine 
nature. 

Nothing so soon wears out and exhausts men as 
deep feelings and strong sympathies, especially those 
which have in them an element of pain, as pity 
hath. Our life requires to be broken in two each 
day and replanted, that it may spring up again from 
sleep, as new blossoms out of soil. "We are buried 
every night for a resurrection of each morning ; and 
thus our life is not a continuous line, unbroken, 
but a series of lives and deaths, of deaths and 
births. 

But God, in his almightiness, asks no rest and 
requires no slumber, but holds straight on without 
weariness, wearing out the ages, himself unworn; 
changing all things, himself without variableness or 
shadow of turning! God is like the sun at noon, 
that casts down straight rays, and so throws down 
the shadows upon the ground underneath each tree ; 
but he never, like the sun, goes westward towards 
his setting, turning all shadows from under the trees, 



god's pity. 43 

and slanting them upon the ground. God stands in 
eternal fullness, like a sun that knows neither morn- 
ing nor evening, nor night, but only noon, and noon 
always ! 

God's pity abides, even as he abides, and partakes 
of the divine grandeur and omnipotence. There is 
a whole eternity in it, for substance and duration. 
As God himself cannot be measured with lines of 
latitude and longitude, but is boundless, so is his 
every attribute. His pity is infinite, moving with 
equal step to all the other attributes of God, and 
holding its course and path as far forth as omnisci- 
ence doth ; it paces with omnipresence along the cir- 
cuits of infinity ! For as heaven is high above 
the earth, so great is his mercy towards them that 
fear him. As far as the east is from the west, 
so far hath he removed our transgressions from 
us! 

God's pity is not as some sweet cordial, poured in 
dainty drops from a golden phial. It is not like 
the musical water-drops of some slender rill, mur- 
muring down the dark sides of Mount Sinai. It is 
wide as the whole cope of heaven. It is abundant 
as all the air. If one had art to gather up all the 
golden sunlight that to-day falls wide over all this 
continent — falling through every silent hour ; and all 
that is dispersed over the whole ocean, flashing from 
every wave ; and all that is poured refulgent over 
the northern wastes of ice, and along the whole con- 
tinent of Europe, and the vast outlying Asia and tor- 
rid Africa ; if one could in anywise gather up this 
immense and incalculable outflow and treasure of 



44 god's pity. 

sunlight that falls down through the bright hours, 
and runs in liquid ether about the mountains, and 
fills all the plains, and sends innumerable rays 
through every secret place, pouring over and filling 
every flower, shining down the sides of every blade 
of grass, resting in glorious humility upon the hum- 
blest things — on stick, and stone, and pebble ; — on the 
spider's web, the sparrow's nest, the threshold of the 
young foxes' hole, where they play and warm them- 
selves; — that rests on the prisoner's window, that 
strikes radiant beams through the slave's tear, 
that puts gold upon the widow's weeds, that 
plates and roofs the city with burnished gold, and 
goes on in its wild abundance up and down the 
earth, shining everywhere and always, since the day 
of primal creation, without faltering, without stint, 
without waste or diminution ; as full, as fresh, as over- 
flowing to-day as if it were the very first day of its 
outplay! — if one might gather up this boundless, end- 
less, infinite treasure, to measure it, then might he 
tell the height and depth, and unending glory of the 
pity of God ! The Light, and the Sun its source, 
are God's own figures of the immensity and copious- 
ness of his mercy and compassion. (Ps. lxxxiv. 11- 
12 ; Is. lv. 6-13.) 

This divine pity applies to us on account of our 
weakness. God looks upon our littleness, as com- 
pared with his angels that excel in strength, much, 
it may be supposed, as we look upon little children 
as compared with grown-up men. 

Divine pity is, also, exercised in view of our suffer- 
ings, both of body and of mind. We sometimes fear 



god's pity. 45 

to bring our troubles to God, because they must seem 
so small to Him who sitteth on the circle of the earth. 
But if they are large enough to vex and endanger 
our welfare, they are large enough to touch his heart 
of love. , For love does not measure by a merchant's 
scales, nor with a surveyor's chain. It hath a deli- 
cacy which is unknown in any handling of material 
substances. 

It sometimes seems as if God cared for nothing. 
The wicked are at ease. The good are vexed 
incessantly. The world is full of misrule and con- 
fusion. The darling of the flock is always made the 
sacrifice. Some child in the very midst of its 
glee becomes suddenly silent — as a music-box, its 
spring giving way, stops in the midst of its strain, 
and never plays out the melody. The mother stag- 
gers, and wanders blindly as though day and night 
were mingled into one, and struck through with 
preternatural influence of woe. But think not that 
God's silence is coldness or indifference ! When 
Christ stood by the dead, the silence of tears inter- 
preted his sympathy more wonderfully than even 
that voice which afterwards called back the footsteps 
of the brother from the grave, and planted them in 
life again ! When birds are on the nest, preparing 
to bring forth life, they never sing. God's stillness 
is full of brooding. Not one tear shall be shed by 
you that does not hang heavier at his heart than 
any world upon his hand ! 

Be not impatient of God. Your sorrow is a seed 
sown. Shall a seed come up in a day, or come up 
all in blossom when it does spring ? Let God plant 



46 god's pity. 

your sorrows, and water and till them according to 
his own husbandry. By and by, when you gather 
their fruit, it will be time to judge his mercy. Now 
no affliction " for the present seemeth to be joyous 
but grievous ; nevertheless, afterwards it yieldeth the 
peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which 
are exercised thereby." Trouble is like any other 
crop. It needs time for growing, for blossoming, and 
for fruiting. 



THE MOUXTAIX AND THE CLOSET. 

" And when he had sent the multitudes away he went up into a 
mountain apart to pray ; and when the evening was come, he was 
there alone." — Matt. xiv. 23. 

He left the crowded shore, the thronged highway, 
and crossing the turfy fields, Christ came to the edges 
of the mountains. His pulse throbbed, and his breath 
quickened, as he clomb, as ours does when we climb. 
The sparrow, not knowing its creator and protector, 
flew away from his coming. His form cast its 
shadow, as he passed, over bush, and flower, and 
grass, and they knew not that their Maker over- 
shadowed them. Sounds grew fainter behind him. 
Those who had followed him, one by one, dropped 
off, and the last eye that looked after him had lost 
his form amid the wavering leaves, and was with- 
drawn. He was in the mountain, and alone. The 
day was passing. The last red light followed him, 
and stained the air of the forest with ruddy hues. 
At length the sun went down, and it was twilight in 
the mountains, though bright yet in the open field. 
But when it was twilight in the field, it was already 
dark in the mountain. The stars were coming for- 
ward and filling the heavens. 

No longer drawn outward by the wants of the 
crowd, what were the thoughts of such a soul ? And 

47 



48 THE MOUNTAIN AND THE CLOSET. 

what were the prayers ? Even if Christ were but a 
man, such an errand and of such a man, would be 
sublime ! But how foolish are all words which would 
approach the grandeur of Christ's solitude upon the 
mountain, if we regard him as very God, though 
incarnated, communing with his coequal Father ! 

What was the varied prayer ? What tears were 
shed, what groans were breathed, what silent yearn- 
ings, what voiceless utterances of desire, no man may 
know. Walking to and fro 5 or sitting upon some 
fallen rock, or prostrate in overpowering emotion, 
the hours passed on until morning dawned. When 
he went down to his disciples, they neither inquired 
nor did he speak of his mountain watch. 

If prayer be the communion of the soul with God, 
it is but a little part of it that can be uttered in 
words ; and still less of it that will take form of words 
in the presence of others. Of outward wants, of out- 
ward things, of one's purely earthly estate, we can 
speak freely. But of the soul's inward life — of its 
struggles with itself, its hopes, yearnings, griefs, 
loves, joys, of its very personality, it is reserved, and 
to such a degree, that there can be no prayer expres- 
sive of the inward life, until we have entered into 
the closet, and shut to the door. Every Christian 
whose life has developed itself into great experience 
of secret prayer, knows that the hidden things of the 
closet transcend all uttered prayer as much in depth, 
richness, and power, as they do in volume and 
space^ 

Sometimes we mourn the loss of old books in an- 
cient libraries; we marvel what more the world 



THE MOUNTAIN AND THE CLOSET. 49 

\TOuld have had if the Alexandrian library had not 
perished ; we regret the decay of parchments, the 
rude waste of monks with their stupid palimpsests. 
We sorrow for the lost arts, and grieve that the 
fairest portions of Grecian art lie buried from re- 
search ; that the Parthenon should come down with- 
in two hundred years of our time, with its wealth of 
magnificence, a voice in stone from the old world to 
the new, and yet perish almost before our eyes ! 

But when one reflects upon the secret history 
which has transpired in men's thoughts, and that the 
noblest natures have been they whose richest expe- 
riences could never have been drawn forth through 
the pen, or recorded in books ; but have found utter- 
ance through prayer, and before the conscious glory 
of the Invisible Presence ; I am persuaded that the 
silent literature of the Closet is infinitely more won- 
derful in every 'attribute of excellence, than all that 
has been sung in song, or recorded in literature, or 
lost in all the concussions of time. If rarest classical 
fragments, the perished histories and poets of every 
people, could be revived, they would be as nothing 
in comparison with the effusions of the Closet, could 
they be gathered and recorded. 

The noblest natures, it is, that resort to this study. 
The rarest inspiration rests upon them. Flying be- 
tween the heavens and the earth, with winged faith, 
they reach out into glories which do not descend to 
the lower spheres of thought. 

How many souls, so large and noble, that they 
rose up in those days of persecution, and left home 
and love for the faith of Christ, and went to the wil- 

3 



50 THE MOUNTAIN AND THE CLOSET. 

derness and dwelt therein, gave forth in prayer their 
whole life ! Doubtless their daily prayers were rich 
and deep in spiritual life. But there are peculiar 
days to all — days of vision — days when we see all 
human life as in a picture, and all future life as in a 
vision; and when the reason, the imagination, the 
affections, and the experiences of life, are so tem- 
pered together, that we consciously live more in an 
hour than at other times in months. Every man has 
his mountains of transfiguration, and sees and talks 
with the revealed and radiant dead. In such expe- 
riences, what must have been the wonders of prayer, 
when the noblest natures — rich in all goodness, 
deeply cultured in knowledge, refined in all taste, 
and enriched in pure lives, but driven out among the 
wild shaking leaves of the wilderness for their faith's 
sake, poured out their whole soul before God ; their 
conscious weakness and sinfulness,* their yearnings 
and trials, their hopes and strivings, their sense of 
this life, and their view of the other, their longing 
for God's church on earth, and their prospect of the 
glorified church in heaven ! What if some listener 
had made haste to put down the prayers of Luther, 
with all his strong crying and tears, if that had been 
possible ! How many noble natures gave up to 
celibacy and virginity the wondrous treasures of 
multitudinous affections. And when at periods of 
heart-swellings, in hours when the secret tide set in 
upon men from the eternal ocean, and carried them 
upon mighty longings and yearnings towards God, 
before whom they poured forth in mingled sobs and 
words those affections which were meant to be eased 



THE MOUNTAIN AND THE CLOSET. 51 

in the love-relations of life, but which, hindered and 
choked, found tumultuous vent in mighty prayer to 
God! 

Consider what mothers 5 hearts have always been. 
How many thousand thousands <)f them have watched 
day and night over the cradle till the body failed, 
but the spirit waxed even keener ; and, with what 
wondrous gushes of words, such as would disdain to 
be called eloquence, have they besought God, with 
every persuasion, for the life of the child ! "We judge 
these things by our own experience. All the words 
that were ever spoken, and all the thoughts that we 
have conceived, are unfit to bear up the skirt of those 
prayers, which burst, without words, right out of our 
hearts, for the life of dying children ! 

Consider what a heavenly wonder must be the 
Book of Prayer that lies before God ! For groans 
are interpreted there. Mute joys gain tongue before 
God. Unutterable desires, that go silently up from 
the heart, burst forth into divine pleadings when, 
touched by the Spirit, their imprisoned nature comes 
forth ! Could thoughts or aspirations be made visi- 
ble, could they assume a form that befitted their 
nature, what an endless procession would be seen 
going towards the throne of God, day and night! 
Consider the wrestlings of all the wretched, the cry 
of orphans, the ceaseless pleadings of the bereaved, 
and of those fearing bereavement; the prayer of trust 
betrayed, of hope darkened, of home deserted, of 
joy quenched ; the prayers of faithful men from 
dungeons and prison-houses ; the prayers of slaves, 
who found man, law, and the church twined around 



52 THE MOUNTAIN AND THE CLOSET. 

and set against them, and had no way left to look 
but upward towards God ! The hearts of men by 
myriads have been pressed by the world as grapes 
are trodden in a wine-press, and have given forth a 
heavenly wine. Beds of long lingering sickness have 
learned such thoughts of resignation, and such patient 
trust and joy, that the heavenly book is bright with 
the footprints of their prayers ! The very silence of 
sickness is often more full of richest thoughts than 
all the books of earth have ever been ! 

"And when he had taken the book, the four 
beasts and the four and twenty elders fell down 
before the Lamb, having every one of them harps 
and golden vials full of odors, which are the prayers 
of the saints" And the other magnificence of the 
scene one may read in the fifth chapter of that gor- 
geous book of divine pictures, the Revelations of St. 
John! How remarkable would it seem, if it were 
revealed to us that there dwelt in the air a race of fine 
and fairy spirits, whose work it was to watch all 
flowers of the earth, and catch their perfumed breath 
and preserve it in golden vials for heavenly use ! But 
how much more grand is the thought that all over the 
earth, God's angels have caught the heart's breath, its 
prayers and love, and that in heaven they are before 
God like precious odors poured from golden vases by 
saintly hands! Again the divine head is anointed 
with precious ointment, not now from the broken ala- 
baster, a woman's gift, but by heavenly hands poured 
sweeter still from broken hearts on earth. 

The influences which brood upon the soul in such a 
covert as the closet, are not like the coarse stimulants 



THE MOUNTAIN AND THE CLOSET. 53 

of earthly thought. It is no fierce rivalry, no conflict 
for victory, no hope of praise or hunger of fame, 
that throw lurid light upon the mind. The soul rises 
to its highest nature, and meets the influence that 
rests upon it from above. What is the depth of 
calmness, what is the vision of faith, what is the 
rapture, the ecstasy of love, the closet knows more 
grandly than any other place of human experience ! 



THE LIBERTY OF PRAYER. 

One may perceive at a glance how exceedingly 
wide is the scope of prayer 

It will begin with a supplication for our temporal 
wants. These are first felt, and felt longest ; and, by 
greatest number of the world, felt chiefly. Next 
higher, will come petitions for relief from trouble, 
for remedy, for shelter in danger. In this, too, the 
soul may exercise its own liberty ; there are no 
metes nor bounds. Then, next, prayer is drawn forth 
by heart-sorr<jfw. A wounded spirit, a bruised heart, 
naturally ttirns for confidence and soothing towards 
God. Its prayer may be supplication for help, or it 
may be only recitation for the sake of peace. Next, 
and far higher, prayer becomes the resource of a 
heart exercised for its own religious growth. It is 
the cry for help against temptation. It is the voice 
of confession. It is a recital of sins committed, and 
a plaint of sorrow for them. It is the soul's liberty 
to go to its father with all its growing pains, its 
labor and travail in spiritual things. Prayer, also, to 
one who lives in daily service of God, oftentimes 
takes the form of simple communion, the spreading 
out of our life to one who is worthy, whom we love 
and trust, not for sake of any special advice, nor for 
sake of special help, but for the heart-rest which 
there is in the thing itself. For none love con- 

54 



THE LIBERTY OF PRAYER. 55 

fidences so much as they who rarely have them. 
None love to speak so much, when the mood of 
speaking comes, as they who are naturally taciturn. 
None love to lean and recline entirely upon another 
so much, as strong natures that ordinarily do not 
lean at all. And so the heart that goes shaded and 
shut, that hiftes its thoughts and dreads the know- 
ledge of men's eyes, flings itself wide open to the 
eye of God. 

Thus, I have sat down within the forest, and while 
men were passing, feet tramping, and voices shouting, 
everything in the boughs and among the leaves hid 
itself. But after the noise had died out, sitting still 
and motionless as the tree I leaned against, I have 
heard a sweet note sounded near me ; then a brief re- 
sponse from yonder bush ; a bird had hopped down 
upon the leaves, squirrels had come forth lithe and 
merry ; and in a few moments all the secrets and con- 
fidences of sylvan shades were revealed to me. And 
thus it is in the soul that shuts itself and holds its 
peace while the world is near, but grows securer in 
silence of contemplation, and lets out its gentle 
thoughts and whispering joys, its hopes or sad fears, 
unto the listening ear and before the kindly eye of 
God! 

But in souls which have caught something of the 
beauty of the divine life, prayer in many of its moods 
becomes more than this. There are times of yearning 
and longing, far beyond the help of the most hopeful. 
There is a prayer which is the voice of the soul plead- 
ing its birthright, crying out for its immortality ; it is 
heavenly home-sickness ! 



56 THE LIBERTY OF PRAYER. 

There are times, too, of great joys and gratitudes — 
times in which nothing is so congenial as to exprsss 
the soul's thoughts of gladness, its spiritual gaiety. 
In some lovely morning of spring, after days of storm 
have made nature mute, when the bright, warm 
dawning comes, can any man tell what it is or why 
it is that birds are wild with ecstatic song, and sit 
singing with perpetual warbling ? Can any man tell 
why it is that they fly singing, turn and wheel in the 
air with every fantastic gyration, or briskly leap 
from bough to bough, and twig to twig, or sportively 
whirl in a feathery fury of mingled delight, a hun- 
dred voices crossing and mingling, with strange 
melody of dissonance ? And can any man, then, 
give a square and solid reason for those experiences 
that sometimes come to all — and that come often to 
some, w T hen thoughts are high and imaginations 
divinely radiant, and the affections full of vibrations 
of joy, and the whole soul is full of rising gladness, 
gratitude, happiness, and at times ecstasies ? Have 
you never felt this ? I am sorry for the man that has 
not ! One day, one hour, of such peaceful joy, were 
worth a year of common pleasure ! 

But the soul does not always live willingly itself 
with itself. There is a privilege of sympathy with 
God which shall bring us hours of most serene 
delight. It is the privilege of God's people to come 
into such spiritual relationship with him that they 
shall have meditations, almost visions, of the divine 
goodness and glory, which will take away from them 
all thought of self-worth or demerit, of joy or sorrow, 
of thrift or adversity ; and will fill them with over- 



THE LIBERTY OF PRAYER. 57 

powering gladness for the greatness and the glory of 
God ! As one who stands before some magnificence of 
nature, or in the presence of some stupendous mar- 
vel, or before an outspread and glorious work of art 
or in a cathedral full of dreamy beauty, or within 
a gallery of paintings, where there is a perfect wilder- 
ness of colors and forms, as if there were as many 
as there are flowers in the wilderness ; — as persons, 
amid such surroundings, are utterly unconscious of 
self, and forgetful whether they are in the body or 
out of it, whether rich or poor, whether in trouble or 
in joy, but are carried quite out of themselves, and 
made to dwell in the realm and glory of the scene 
before them ; so, and much more, is it in the power 
of God to open such views of himself to the soul, as 
to fill and overflow its capacity and to make its 
life, for the time, a life beyond the body — a life that 
goes forth, as it were, out of doors, and mounts up 
to the very heavens, and stands before the eternal 
glory of Love, and among the radiant multitudes in 
the endless processions of heavenly hosts that are for 
ever praising God ! 

Who shall lay tax upon the tongue, or upon the 
thoughts, in such glorious visions as these ? Who 
shall criticise or regulate the prayer that springs 
from such experiences as these ? Let a man arro- 
gantly teach rain how to fall, or clouds how to shape 
themselves, and with what paces to march their airy 
rounds, or the season how to plant, and tend and 
garner ; but let him not teach a soul how to pray, 
upon whom the Holy Ghost thus broods and 
breathes ! 

3* 



58 THE LIBERTY OF PRAYER 

They to whom is given such communion cannot 
but bear the burden of the Lord in earthly things. 
Christ's cause, and glory in the salvation of souls, 
will oftentimes move their prayers with deep and 
inexhaustible desires. They may not seek such 
experiences. They do not come by common asking. 
They are given to them who are one with Christ ; 
who have entered into such sympathy with God, 
that they must needs bear his cross and, as it were, be 
crucified for sinners. 

And, in like manner, God makes his servants to 
bear the burden of God's cause on earth at large ; so 
that, at times, the desires, the yearnings and prayers 
for the prosperity of Zion, will be almost more than 
flesh can bear ; so that in the expressive language 
of Scripture, they frrwvail in birth for God's work on 
earth ! 

There, are yet other modes of prayer ; but who 
shall frame words to express what that communion 
is which the soul holds when, in the fullness of its 
own feeling, it overflows with praises. It is appa- 
rent how great is the folly of those who decry prayer 
as being useless, inasmuch as God knows what we 
need — as if asking for enjoyable things is all that a 
soul does in prayer. What if a man should have an, 
idea as ignoble as this of sounds and space, and 
should say that no words or sounds are sensible, or of 
any value and desirableness, except such as articu- 
late well-defined wants ; as if they were of no use 
in exclamations of gladness, in tones and words of 
joy, in the mazes and tropical exuberance of love, in 
the sweet endearments of friendship; as if they 



THE LIBERTY OF PRAYER. 59 

were of no use in music, in shouts of gladness, and, 
in short, in any utterance except those for servile 
uses! 

With regard to forms of prayer, these are of use, 
and are proper to be used by all who need them ; 
but they can never include the whole of that 
utterance which the soul should express to God in 
prayer ! 

Some persons are often troubled respecting fami- 
liarity and irreverence in prayer. But it should be 
remembered by such that the confidence of love is 
not irreverence. God permits his people to plead 
with him, and to pour out their confidence freely. 
The exhortation is explicit, " Let us come loldly to 
the throne of grace !" 

Some are discouraged, when after continued com- 
munion with God, they do not find any such range 
and progression in prayer. To pray is, to many, like 
speaking a new and foreign language. It must be 
learned. One is not surprised that a foreign tongue 
is slowly and brokenly spoken at first. Prayer 
gains in scope and richness as the elements of 
spirituality increase and the habit of expression is 
formed. 



FAULTS IN PEAYER. 

Private prayer ought to be regarded as a plea- 
sure and privilege, not as a duty. But public prayer 
may fitly be spoken of as a duty, since it is seldom 
that one » would of choice pray publicly for his own 
devotion, but only because it is his duty to the 
brotherhood. No service needs more, and none is 
susceptible of so little, improvement by means of 
instruction. This is an exercise in which men cannot 
be drilled. It is ungracious even to criticise what 
purports to be an address to God. Yet, there are 
some suggestions which we shall venture to make. 

We think it very important that the pastor, or 
some leading officer, should be faithful with the 
younger members of the church in pointing out 
blemishes and faults, which may easily be corrected 
at first, but which, if suffered to go on, will become 
ineradicable. One man falls into a whining tone, 
another prays in an inaudible whisper, another exalts 
his voice far beyond the natural conversational 
pitch, and others lose the natural tones entirely, and 
pray in a kind of sacred falsetto. Some talk in tenor, 
but pray in base ; some converse in upper-base notes, 
but pray in tenor notes. If a brother first speaks, 
and then prays, a stranger, listening from the out- 
side, would think two different men had been speak- 
ing. This habit becomes very marked in the minis- 

60 



FAULTS IN PRAYER. 61 

trations of clergymen, many of whom come, at 
length, to have a conversation voice, a praying voice, 
a hymn voice, a reading voice, and a preaching voice. 

Men are seldom entirely true to themselves and 
natural in their prayers. There is a certain round 
of topics supposed to be necessary to a symmetrical 
prayer. These they punctiliously introduce, whe- 
ther their heart craves such utterance or not. Of all 
forms of prayer, extemporaneous forms are the worst. 
They have all the evils of written prayers without 
their propriety. If, when a Christian brother were 
in full tide of prayer along the regular succession of 
topics, Christ should really appear before him, how 
extremely impertinent would most of the petitions 
seem, addressed to a living and visible Saviour ! 
Thus a man's real feeling is not expressed, and mat- 
ters quite good in themselves, but almost wholly 
indifferent to him, constitute the bulk of petition. 
Reverential tones and well-connected sentences, ex- 
pressing very proper ideas, do not constitute prayer. 
The very essence of praying is, that it conveys the 
real desires or thoughts of the suppliant. "When a 
man really reveres God, how simple is the language 
of veneration ! But if his heart is breaking with 
sorrow, or depressed by care, or fretted by ill-adjusted 
affairs, why should he leave the real strain of feeling, 
and strike into a false key? 

It is remarkable how skillfully men will contrive 
to avoid all real interests, and express almost wholly 
those which are not real to them. A man prays for 
the glory of God, for the advance of his kingdom, for 
the evangelization of the world ; but, in that very 



62 FAULTS IN PRAYER. 

time, he will not allude to the very things in which 
his own life may stand, nor to the wants which every 
day are working their impress upon his character. 
The cares, the petty annoyances, the impatience of 
temper, pride, self-indulgence, selfishness, conscious 
and unconscious ; or, on the other hand, the glad- 
nesses of daily life, the blessings of home, the felici- 
ties of friendship, the joys and success of life — in 
short, all the things which one would talk of to a 
venerable mother, in an hour of confidence, are 
excluded from prayer among the brotherhood. 
Without a doubt, there is to be reserve and delicacy 
exercised in the disclosure of one's secret and private 
experiences. But this is not to be carried so far as 
to strip prayer of all its leaves and blossoms, and 
leave it like a formal bush or tree in winter, with 
barren branches standing in sharp outline against a 
cold sky. 

We y must enter a solemn protest against the desecra- 
tion of the name of God, so very common in prayer. 
There would seem to be no necessity, in a prayer of ordi- 
nary length, and upon ordinary occasions, of more than 
one or two repetitions of the divine name. Instead of 
this, it is often repeated from twenty to forty times. 
Every sentence begins, " O Lord !" Often the middle 
of a sentence is pivoted upon the divine name. It is 
made to be a word on which, long drawn out, men 
collect their thoughts or gather breath. It is a word 
used simply to begin a sentence or to close it up. 
Iri short, the name of God degenerates into a mere 
rhetorical embellishment, and is the wasteword of 
the prayer. For our own part, prayers interlarded 



FAULTS IN PKAYER. 63 

in this manner are extremely repulsive, and even 
shocking. The prayer of intense feeling, of uncon- 
trollable sorrow, or desire, are the exception. And 
no one would shrink from any repetition of the 
Divine name, which seems like the clinging and 
pleading of an earnest and yearning heart. Nor 
can we consent, any more, to be moved by the 
interjections and epithets of prayer. Many prayers 
are rolling full of O's, and the voice runs 
through half a semicircular scale of gracious into- 
nation with every other sentence. It is, O do this, 
and O do that, O send, O give, O bless, O help, 
O teach, O look, O smile, O come, O forgive, O 
spare, O hear, O let, O snatch, O watch — O ! O ! O ! 
O ! through the whole petition, with every variation 
of inflection. Some O's are deep and sad ; some are 
shrill and short, some are blunt and decisive, but 
more are long, very long, affectingly long ! 

It is sometimes painful to hear men getting their 
prayers to a close. After advancing through the topics 
for a proper time, it seems as if it were thought need- 
ful to throw in a collection of very short petitions, or 
to come to the close through a certain cadence of 
petitions, until at last the gate is reached, and the 
man comes out in regular style through the "for- 
ever and ever, Amen!" And so habituated have 
ijien become to this, that a prayer that begins with- 
out a certain conventional opening, and closes with- 
out the regular gradations, is thought singular and 
irreverent. The familiarity of deep feeling, the bold- 
ness of love, the artless sentences of unconscious 
sincerity, are to some undevout, while the cramming 



64 FAULTS IN PRAYER. 

a prayer with, all manner of conventionalisms gives 
no offence, if the manner is only solemn. Solemnity 
is a mask behind which levity and thoughtlessness 
heap up endless fantasies. It is the arch-patron of 
hypocrisy. 

The use of Scriptural language in prayer becomes 
often a serious vice. Of course, when fitly used, no 
language can be more elevated and appropriate. 
But when texts or scraps, and fragments of texts 
are strung together, or when certain favorite texts 
recur in every prayer, long after they have ceased 
to convey to the hearer the thoughts originally 
coupled with them, the use of Scripture, instead of 
edifying, injures. A prayer is not a thread on 
which men are to see how many texts they can 
string. 

An improper use of figurative language in prayers, 
is a source of positive mischief. We take no excep- 
tion to figurative language when it springs fresh 
from the imagination. Then it augments the tide of 
thought and feeling. But there are certain figures, 
and not all of them Biblical, which have been re- 
peated over and over, until all sense is gone from 
them, except a false sense. They come to be, at 
length, in effect, the assertion of literal truths. And 
a figure that was meant simply to kind]e the imagi- 
nation, finds itself in a didactic position, teaching the 
strangest conceivable things. 

Some men are always u opening the windows of 
heaven," " raining a rain of mercy," " laying down 
the weapons of rebellion." " Stony hearts," "un- 
clean hands," " blind eyes," " deaf ears," at length 



FAULTS IN PRAYER. 65 

transfer the thoughts to the outward symbol, and 
quite hide the inward and specific spiritual state. 
Some men never say humble, or humility, except by 
such expressions as " on the bended knee of the 
soul," and going down into the valley of humili- 
ation." Many men have apparently forgotten the 
name of Christ. They always use the word " cross " 
instead. They pray to be reconciled to the " Cross," 
they exhort men to come to the " Cross," to look up at 
the " Cross," to lay down their sins at the foot of the 
" Cross." We once heard an ordination sermon of 
great ability upon salvation by Christ, in which that 
name was not once mentioned, the " Cross" becoming 
the synonym. Had a heathen stranger been present, he 
would have supposed the name of the God whom we 
worshipped to be " Cross." This is the more unfor- 
tunate, because it not only sinks the power of a 
living personality, but presents in its stead a symbol 
which, however precious, and historically affecting, 
may, by too great familiarity, lose entirely from sight 
the Saviour, and leave only the wood ; a relic worse 
than any which Eomish superstition has presented. 



AIDS TO PEAYER. 

We have always been affected by the petition of 
the disciples to the Saviour, " Lord, teach us how to 
pray." How many yet would fain address the same 
request, with simplicity and conscious want, to 
Christ! It is not our purpose to say anything to 
those Christians who have by long experience learned 
the way of prayer, and made its language as familiar 
to them as their mother-tongue ; but to them only 
who are vexed with the troubles incident to begin- 
ning. / 

If the first moments of the morning, the very 
first thoughts of the day, are given to prayer, it will 
be found, at least in many cases, to give direction to 
the feelings of the whole day. The key-note of the 
day is struck early. And simple as it may seem, we 
have forced a few moments in the morning to hold 
the day to its course, as a rudder does the ship. 
Some persons, we suspect, fail of interest in prayer, 
by attempting to pray by the clock. They have 
been taught that a regular time and an appointed 
place are eminently beneficial. They have tried the 
time with so many failures, that the place, by associ- 
ation and memory of ill success, becomes disgustful. 
We are not about to say that punctuality and regu- 
larity are not good, but only that they are not alike 
good for all ; and that when experience shows that 

66 . 



AIDS TO PRAYERS. 67 

they hinder and do not help, Christians are under 
no law to the clock. Persons of regulated feel- 
ings, of methodical habits, and of uniform occupa- 
tions, find great advantage in stated hours of prayer. 
People of mercurial dispositions, who live without 
special arrangement and system, will find, on the 
contrary, that such attempts at punctuality will not 
help them, except as an exercise in method and regu- 
larity. 

If a man should insist upon wallowing in the sand 
when the tide was out, because he had made up his 
mind to bathe in one place and at one hour, he 
would not be much unlike him who prays when his 
watch, and not when his heart, tells him the time. 
Christians are to remember that they are children of 
liberty. They are not bound up, as the Jews were, 
to times and seasons, to places and methods. Prayer 
may become a yoke of superstition, instead of the 
wings of liberty. 

It may be briefly said, take notice of the time? 
when prayer is refreshing. Learn from your ow_ 
experience how and when prayer is best for you. 
You are under bonds to no man, be he minister or 
layman. 

We think that one may very much aid himself, by 
taking a few moments of his brightest hours for 
silent prayer. The Jews were taught to present 
their best fruits for offerings. We should not choose 
refuse hours, good for nothing else, to pray in. !No 
matter where you are, nor what you are doing, send 
a glance Godward from the top of every exalted 
hour — as from a hill top, a child, going home, would 



68 AIDS TO PRAYERS. 

strive to catch, a glimpse of his father's house. 
In this manner, after a little, the soul would lay 
up remembrances of many sweet and noble expe- 
riences, and would fight discouragements by hope 
drawn from past success. 

We suspect that many persons mar this enjoyment 
by very erroneous ideas of quantity. They read of 
eminent Christians who pray by the hour, they hear 
sermons upon the wrestling of Jacob with the Angel, 
and above all, they are told that Christ prayed $11 
night. They therefore attempt immense prayer. 
Of course they fail. A man might as well attempt 
to imitate the old prophets who ate in preparation of 
forty days' fast. If a man is moved to pray only 
five minutes, it is his duty to stop there. If he is 
moved to pray an hour, he is at liberty to do so. 
But in every case, prayer is to be regulated by your 
own inward want, and not from the outside by 
somebody's example. Indeed, we meet every day 
with persons who would be injured by long praying. 
They have but little to' say. If Christ were on earth, 
and they were disciples, they would listen rather than 
speak. There is communion by thinking as well as 
speaking. There is unuttered prayer as well as 
vocal. Thoughts that roll silently are more signifi- 
cant, often, than those which can clothe themselves 
in words. It is possible to pray too much. That is 
always too much which is beyond your real want or 
desire. 

Christians bring themselves into trouble by very 
false ideas of prayer. They select impassioned pray- 
ers as models, and judge themselves to be praying in 



AIDS TO PRAYERS. 69 

proportion as they approach these examples. But 
what if jour wants are few, your feelings tranquil, 
your thoughts simple, and your whole mind and ex- 
perience formed upon a different basis ? Is prayer 
some objective exercise to be copied ? or is it the pre- 
senting before God of just what you think, feel, or 
need ? 

One single sentence is a sufficient prayer. There 
is no one who cannot command his thoughts long 
enough for that. If your thoughts wander, the pro- 
bability is that you are trying to pray too much. 
Be shorter. Say just as much as there is in you to 
say. If there is nothing, say nothing ; if little, say 
little ; silence is better than mockery. Consider 
the Lord's prayer, how short, how simple. It con- 
tains the whole world's want, and yet a little child 
can use it. 

Accept prayer as liberty, and not a bondage. Use 
it in any manner that will be of profit. Go often 
and tarry but a little, or go and tarry all night, 
if you will, upon the mount. You pray if there 
is but one sentence — God be merciful to me a sin- 
ner — just as freely as if there were a thousand be- 
sides. 



FOESAKHSTG GOD. 

"We have known men — upon whose grounds waved 
magnificent trees of centuries' growth, lifted up into 
the air with vast breadth, and full of twilight at 
mid-day — who cut down all these mighty monarchs, 
and cleared the ground bare ; and then, when the 
desolation was complete, and the fierce summer 
gazed full into their face with its fire, they bethought 
themselves of shade, and forthwith set out a genera- 
tion of thin, shadowless sticks, pining and waiting 
till they should stretch out their boughs with protec- 
tion and darken the ground with grateful shadow. 
Such folly is theirs who refuse the tree of life, the 
shadow of the Almighty, and sit, instead, under the 
feeble trees of their own planting, whose tops will 
never be broad enough to shield them, and whose 
boughs will never voice to them the music of the 
air. Some of the most remarkable figures of the 
Bible are made to illustrate this sad truth. 

The mountains lift their tops so high in the air that 
towering clouds, which have no rest in the sky, love 
to come to them, and wrapping about their tops, 
distill their moisture upon them. Thus mountains 
hold commerce with God's upper ocean, and, like 
good men, draw supplies from the invisible. And so 
it is, that in the times of drought in the vales below, 
the rocks are always wet. The mountain moss is 

70 



FORSAKING GOD. 71 

always green. The seams and crevices are always 
dripping, and rock-veins are throbbing a full pulse, 
while all the scene down below faints for want • of 
moisture. In some virgin gorge, unwedded by the sun, 
these cold rills bubble up and issue forth upon their 
errand. Could one who builds his house upon the 
plain but meet and tap these springs in the mountain, 
and lay his artificial channels to the very source, he 
would never know when drought cometh. For 
mountain springs never grow dry so long as clouds 
brood the hill tops. Day and night they gush and 
fall with liquid plash and unheard music; except 
when thirsty birds — to whose song the rivulet all day 
long has been a bass — stoop to drink at their crystal 
edges ! And he who has put himself into commu- 
nication with these mountain springs shall never be 
unsupplied. While artificial cisterns dry up, and 
crack for dryness, this mountain fountain comes night 
and day with cool abundance. While others, with 
weary strokes, force up from deep w T ells a penurious 
supply of turbid water, he that has joined himself to 
a mountain spring, has its voice in his dwelling night 
and day, summer and winter, without work or stroke 
of laboring pump, clear, sweet, and cheerful ; run- 
ning of its own accord to serve, and singing at its 
work, more musical than any lute ; and in its song 
bringing suggestions of its mountain home — the dark 
recess, the rock which was its father, the cloud which 
was its mother, and the teeming heaven broad above 
both rock and cloud ! 

With such a spring, near, accessible, urging itself 
upon the eye and ear, how great would be his folly 



72 FORSAKING GOD. 

who should abandon it, and fill his attic with a 
leaden cistern, that for ever leaked when full, and 
was dry when it did not leak ! Listen, then, to the 
word of God : " My people have committed two 
evils ; they have forsaken me, the fountain of living 
waters, and have hewed them out cisterns, broken 
cisterns, that can hold no water." 

Man is not made to be independent in his powers. 
With all his endowments he is made to lean on every 
side for support; and should his connections on 
either side be cut, he would droop and wither like a 
tree whose roots had been sundered. 

The eye carries no light with it, but receives its 
sight from the luminous element without. The ear 
hath no sound within it, but only receives it from 
without. The tongue and throat beat upon the air 
for vibrations, as a musician strikes for musical 
sounds ; and if hindered in their connections or bro- 
ken from their dependencies, ear, tongue, and eye 
would fall back into voiceless darkness. And every 
bodily function is directly or immediately joined to the 
physical world in such a way, that, while man is lord 
of creation, he is also its subject and dependent, and 
must ask leave to exist from the earth, the air, the 
sun and the clouds. 

These dependent relations symbolize the yet more 
important relations which the soul sustains to God. 
Man is not made to exist in rounded, perfect, and 
independent spiritual life in his own right and nature. 
He only is a perfect man who has himself in the 
embrace of God. The soul only when divinely brooded 
receives its power. Our faculties, like the eye that 



FORSAKING GOD. 73 

must be filled with light from without, wait for their 
power from above. It is the divine energy acting 
through the human faculty, that gives to man his 
real existence. Nor does any man know his power, 
his nature, his richness of emotion, the height and 
depth of his being until he unfolds under the stimu- 
lus of God's imbreathed influence. 

What is that effluence ? "What is this spirit which 
acts within or upon the soul ? I will tell you when 
you will tell me what it is in light and heat that 
works upon the root to bring forth the stem ; what it 
is that works within the stem to bring forth the bud ; 
what it is that works upon the bud to persuade it 
into blossom ; and what that mysterious spirit is, that, 
dismissing the beauty of the bloom, holds back its 
life in the new form of fruit. It is light, it is 
heat, it is moisture, it is the soil, it is the plant, it 
is the vital energy of nature. Thus we stand throw- 
ing words at a marvellous change, whose interior na- 
ture we cannot search nor find out. " So is every one 
that is born of the Spirit." 

But of the fact itself, it is full of blessedness 
to know that the soul has a relationship to God, 
personal, direct, vital, and that it grows and blos- 
soms by it, while it languishes and dwarfs without it. 

The body grows by its true connections with 
material nature ; the social affections grow by their 
true relations to men and society ; and the spiritual 
powers must grow by their true relations to God. 
In the material world, the roots of trees are in the 
ground, while the top moves freely above. But the 
soul roots upward, and so like long, pendulous vines 



74 FOKSAKING GOD. 

of air-plants, that root upon tropical branches, has its 
liberty down towards the earth. We are the branches 
of Christ. " As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, 
except it abide in the vine, no more can ye except ye 
abide in me. 5 ' 

But is not this a bondage and restriction? To 
selfishness it may be ; but not to love. Selfishness 
grows strong by shrinking, for concentration is the 
nature of selfishness. But love grows by pressing 
outward and evolving. 

That we are bound to God is as great a restric- 
tion of our liberty as it is to a plant's freedom to 
be held by the sun ; to the child's liberty that the 
double-orbed love of father and mother bear it 
up from cradled nothingness to manly power; or 
to the human heart's liberty, when, finding another 
life, two souls move through the sphere of love, 
flying now with double wings, but one spirit. ]STo man 
has come to himself who has not known what it is to 
be utterly forgetful of self in loving. And no man 
has yet learned to love who has not felt his heart 
beat upon the bosom of God. As a bird born in a 
cage, and singing there, amid short, impatient hops, 
from perch to wire, from wire to ring, and from ring 
to perch again, so is man unrenewed. As this bird, 
when darting through the opened door, feels with 
wondrous thrill the wide sweep of the open air, and 
dare not sing for joy, but goes from ground to limb, 
from lower limb to higher, until the topmost bough 
be reached, and then, stooping for a moment, springs 
upward and flies with wild delight, and fills the air 
as it goes with all its sounds of ransomed joy — so is 






FORSAKING GOD. 75 

the soul that first learns its liberty in God, and 
goes singing heavenward in all " the light and liberty 
of the sons of God." 

He who forsakes God for a greater liberty, is 
like a babe lost from its mother. They who refrain 
from God for the sake of pleasure, are like men run- 
ning from the free air to seek sunlight amid shadows 
and in dungeons. They who withdraw from God 
that they may have wider circuits of personal power 
are like birds that forsake the forests and fly 
within the fowler's cage, to find a larger bound and 
wider liberty. 



A KHAPSODY OF THE PEN UPON THE TONGUE. 

When St. James says, " If any man offend not in 
word, the same is a perfect man, and able also to 
bridle the whole body," one is at first surprised. It 
would seem to place the sum of virtue in a very 
little thing. But a larger experience of life would 
change our opinion. The tongue is the exponent 
of the soul. It is the flame which it issues, as light- 
ning is the tongue of the clouds. It is the sword of 
anger, the club of brutal rage, the sting of envy. It 
is the soul's right hand, by which it strikes with 
wasting power. On the other hand, the tongue 
is the soul's voice of mercy, the string on which its 
love vibrates as music ; the pencil with which it 
fashions its fairest pictures ; the almoner of its gifts ; 
the messenger of its bounties ! 

By speech a man may touch human life within 
and without. No sceptre has such power in a king's 
hand, as the soul hath in a ready tongue ; which 
also has this advantage, that well uttered words 
never die, but go sounding on to the end of the 
world, not lost when seemingly silent, but rising 
and falling between the generations of men, as ships 
rise and fall between waves, hidden at times, but 
not sunken. A fit speech is like a sweet and favorite 
tune. Once struck out, it may be sung or played 
forever. It flies from man to man, and makes its 

76 



A RHAPSODY OF THE PEN UPON THE TONGUE. 77 

nest in the heart as . birds do in trees. ; This is 
remarkably exemplified in maxims and proverbs. 
A generation of men by their experience prove 
some moral truth, and all know it as a matter of con- 
sciousness. By and by, some happy man puts the 
truth into words, and ten thousand people say, He 
got that from ma ; for a proverb is a child born from 
ten thousand parents. Afterwards the proverb has 
the liberty of the world. A good proverb wears a 
crown and defies revolution or dethronement. It 
walks up and down the earth an invisible knight- 
errant helping the needy. A man might frame and 
set loose a star to roll in its orbit, and yet not have 
done so memorable a thing before God as he who 
lets go a golden-orbed speech to roll through the 
generations of time. The tongue may be likened to 
an organ, which, though but one instrument, has 
within it an array of different pipes and stops, and 
discourses in innumerable combinations. If one man 
sits before it not skilled to control its powers, he 
shall make it but a monstrous jargon. But when 
one comes who knows its ways, and has control of its 
powers, then it becomes a mountain of melody, and 
another might well think he heard the city of God in 
the hour of its singing. The tongue is the key-board of 
the soul. But it makes a world of difference who 
sits to play upon it. "Therewith bless we God, and 
therewith curse we men." It is sweeter than honey. 
It is bitterer than gall. It is balm and consola- 
tion. It is sharper than a serpent's tooth. It is a 
wand that touches with hope, and lifts us up. It 
is a mace that beats us down, and leaves us wounded 



78 A RHAPSODY OF THE PEN UPON THE TONGUE. 

upon tha ground. One trumpet, but how different 
the blasts blown upon it, by love, by joy, by humility, 
or by hatred, pride, anger ! 

A heart that is full of goodness, that loves and 
pities, that yearns to invest the richest of its mercy 
in the souls of those that need it — how sweet a 
tongue hath such a heart ! A flute sounded in a 
wood, in the stillness of evening, and rising up among 
leaves that are not stirred by the moonlight above, 
or by those murmuring sounds beneath; a clock, 
that sighs at half hours, and at the full hours beats 
its silver bell so gently, that we know not whence 
the sound comes, unless it falls through the air from 
heaven, with sounds as sweet as dew-drops make, in 
heaven, falling upon flowers ; a bird whom perfumes 
have intoxicated, sleeping in a blossomed tree, so that 
it speaks in its sleep with a note so soft that sound 
and sleep strive together, and neither conquer, but the 
sound rocks itself upon the bosom of sleep, each 
charming the other ; a brook that brings down the 
greeting of the mountains to the meadows, and sings 
a serenade all the way to the faces that watch them- 
selves in its brightness, these, and a hundred 
like figures, the imagination brings to liken there- 
unto the charms of a tongue which love plays upon. 
Even its silence is beautiful. Under a green tree 
we see the stream so clear that nothing is hidden to 
its bottom. We cast in round, white pebbles to hear 
them plash, and to see the crystal-eyed fish run in, 
and sail out again. So there are some whose speak- 
ing is like the fall of jasper stones upon the silent 
river, and whose stillness follows speech, as silent 



A RHAPSODY OF THE PEN UPON THE TONGUE. 79 

fish that move like dreams beneath the untroubled 
water ! 

It was in some such dreaming mood, methinks, 
old Solomon spoke : " A wholesome tongue is a tree 
of life." And what fruit grows thereon, he explains, 
when he afterwards says, a A word fitly spoken, is 
like apples of gold in baskets of silver," — beautiful 
whether seen through the silver network of the sides, 
or looked upon from above, resting their orbed ripe- 
ness upon the fretted edge of the silver bed. 



AN AGED PASTOE'S RETUBN. 

It was about half-past nine o'clock at night that 
the conductor upon the Naugatuck Railroad train 
called out "Litchfield!" We stepped out into the 
light of the brightest moon, and looked about only 
to see two or three snug houses, and a little bit of a 
station-house. The town lay four miles to the west, 
L e n by daylight, and with a nimble team. It was 
at least ten miles that night. But we did not care. 
Nothing is more befitting than to return to one's 
native place in the quiet of night, and with the 
witchery of moonlight, that at the same time reveals 
and dims old familiar places. It was thirty-one years 
since either of us, my venerable father or myself, 
had been on this road. We had been back to the 
town before, but had approached it from a different 
point. As we climbed up hill after hill, the driver, 
an intelligent man, gave us the names of the places, 
and what power was there in many of them to evoke 
the past, and bring up its faded scenes in a pastor's 
heart! Litchfield was a large township, and the 
inhabitants were in neighborhoods among the hills, 
and along the clefts and valleys. It was necessary 
to have preaching places in every direction. On the 
Sabbath, the farmers would come to the "town-hill" 
meeting-house, but during the week, there were 
lectures and conference meetings appointed, in turn, 

so 



AN AGED PASTOR'S RETURN. 81 

in every neighborhood, at distances from two to six 
miles from the centre. As we rode along, the aged 
pastor, who was returning to the scenes of his early 
ministry, was full of recollections, as one name after 
another was called. In this house he used to lec- 
ture; in that, he remembered an affecting funeral; 
yonder, he used to hold conference meetings; and 
all the region about was storied with religious inter- 
est. The seventeen years which Dr. Lyman Beecher 
spent in Litchfield, though not the most influential, 
perhaps, upon the whole country, were probably the 
most laborious and energetic of his life. Some 
passages of his history here would seem almost fabu- 
lous to the economical workers of our day. 

It was half-past ten o'clock when we reached the 
mansion-house. The Rev. Leonard Bacon, jr., re- 
ceived us cordially — the fifth pastor who has suc- 
ceeded in the ministry of the white-haired patriarch 
whom he now greeted. In the thirty-one years that 
separate these two ministries, what a history has 
transpired ? And as the young pastor led the aged 
one across the old common to his house, is it strange 
that we followed with more thoughts than can well 
be put into expression ? 

A good fire blazed on the hearth. Blessings on 
wood ! "We should have despaired at once, had we 
come back to Litchfield to find a coal fire, or worse 
than that, to find a black hole in the corner of the 
room puffing out dry heat, instead of the old, hospi- 
table fireplace, with ashes and coals, and the long- 
fingered blaze that opens and shuts its red palm with 

every grace and sleight of hand. A good Litchfield 

4* 



82 AN AGED PASTOR'S RETURN. 

fire of Litchfield wood, even if it was only the first 
week of September, was the very fittest banner that 
could be spread out to greet us, and every fold and 
flicker of flame brought back from the past old 
shapes and long-buried scenes, that used to flit 
round the fireplace, years ago, before railroads were 
dreamed of, and when New York lay a week's jour- 
ney from us ; when the old red or yellow stages 
came once a day from the north, once from the 
south, and once from the east; when the driven 
blew the horns as they came into town, and boys 
heard the curling notes go through the air, and 
thought that a stage-driver was the greatest man on 
earth, and that to hold four reins and a whip in one 
hand, while the other held to the pouting lips the v 
long tin horn, noisy at both ends, was the most won- 
derful feat of skill ever achieved ! 

The next day it was sent out far and wide that 
Dr. Beecher was in town. Though the great body 
of his former parishioners had passed away, some 
remained that were old when he preached here. As 
we passed the graveyard coming into town my 
father, pointing to it, said, " There is the congrega- 
tion to which I preached when I was here !" Silent 
now and without memory. The unconscious assem- 
bly gave no greeting as we passed, but kept their 
long Sabbath without bell or tithing-man ! But some 
yet remained alive. Men now of fifty years were 
boys when my father left. Those who blushed to 
think of love and husband yet, now rocked their 
grandchildren's cradle ! Those who were then in the 
prime middle of life were now venerable. 



AN AGED PASTOR'S RETURN. 83 

And indeed Litchfield is the last place one should 
settle in who desires to go early to his rest. It seems 
difficult to obtain release from earth on this clear hill- 
top. Men are counted very young at fifty, and 
sound at seventy-five, and not very old at eighty. 
One old man, near ninety, modestly told us that his 
mind had been affected by a shock ; but surely he 
had more wit and sprightliness, after all his loss, than 
most men have to begin with. He was peculiarly 
thankful that while he was too old to do much him- 
self, God had been pleased to give him a young wife. 
She was only seventy-five, he informed us. 

A man past eighty, going through the streets to 
visit all the fathers and mothers in Israel that had 
been young in his ministry there, was a scene not a 
little memorable. One patriarch, in his ninety-ninth 
year, when his former pastor came into the room, 
spoke not a word, but rose up, and putting his trem- 
bling arms about his neck burst into tears. Did he 
see in that moment, as by the opening of a door, all 
the way he had walked till that hour, and all the 
companions who had walked with him ? and did he 
feel, standing by the venerable pastor, two old men, 
how few there were that yet kept step with him upon 
the bleak way of life ? 

Passing his own former home, my father broke out 
with a swing of his arm, " Oh, how many thoughts and 
associations hang about that place ! They fill the air 
like swarms of bees, and yet I cannot speak one of 
them !" 

The particular errand which brought us hither 
was a lecture. A new organ was to be bought. All 



84 



Litchfield boys were permitted to lielp. Our contri- 
bution was asked in the shape of a lecture, and 
it was soon done. Then the aged pastor came for- 
ward. A crowd of old and young gathered at the 
pulpit stairs to grasp the hand that had baptized 
them, or had broken to them the bread of life. It 
was a scene of few words. One woman gave her 
name, but was not recognized in her married name. 
She then mentioned her maiden name. That touched 
a hidden spring. Both burst into tears, but spoke no 
words. The history came up instantly before both, 
but silently, which had occasioned the preaching of 
those " Six Sermons upon Intemperance." That vol- 
ume is in every land on earth, and in many lan- 
guages. It is preaching and working with unwast- 
ing vigor. Those that read it know only that it is a 
cry and pleading that few men can hear without 
deep feeling. But not many know that it was a cry 
of love, the utter effort of a heart of love to save a 
dear friend imperilled, or two friends, rather, closely 
related. One of them was rescued. These sudden 
openings of memory to scenes that included in them 
the strangest experiences of life, pictures painted on 
the past, with strokes of thought as sudden and as 
revealing as when the lightning at night opens the 
heavens and the earth with wide sheeting flash, and 
shuts again with obliterating darkness, cannot be 
drawn or described upon paper. 

The second morning, also, was memorable for 
greetings, and conversations whose roots were forty 
years deep in the soil of the past. For ourselves, 
we hovered about as a mere shadow among those 



AN AGED PASTOR'S RETURN. 85 

who had a right to be principals in these sacred 
meetings. If an angel could write all that tran- 
spires when an aged warrior in the church mili- 
tant comes back to the earlier fields of his achieve- 
ments, and meets the companions of his toils, 
where tears and prayers, hopes and joys, sorrows 
and deaths, and troubles worse than death, were com- 
mon experiences, it would be a history of more mat- 
ter and depth than all the volumes that are stuffed 
with empires, and buffoon kings, and prelates. 

Last of all, as we departed, it was fit that we should 
stand silently by those stones that record mother and 
wife, sister and son, a lonely group ! I could not for- 
bear to think of the stream and its contents that 
has flooded between the two points of time, the first 
when I, a little babe, my father came to the burial 
ground, bearing the wife of his youth to her rest ; and 
the second, when leaning on my stronger strength, his 
failing steps came again, and probably for the last 
time, to behold the grass that again waves, as it has 
yearly waved for forty-six years ! Between these 
two comings hither, then and now, a great army of 
events hath marched. 

While witnessing such scenes, it is strange that 
one cannot foresee a like experience. But men sel- 
dom look forward to see old age. They look into the 
future with young eyes. It seems very vague and 
doubtful to me whether I shall ever walk with trem- 
bling steps, and bedimmed eye, among early 
scenes, an old man, waiting for permission to go 
'home ! 



LESSONS FECM THE TIMES. 

" When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather ; for the sky 
is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather to-day ; for the 
sky is red and lowering. 0, ye hypocrites ! ye can discern the face 
of the sky ; but can ye not discern the signs of the times ?" 

Every season is indebted to that which has gone 
before. Yet, the first labor of the new life of grass 
is to pnsh away the old and overlying growth. 
Many trees are obliged to begin the spring by 
casting off the leaves of the previous year. Thus it 
was in the moral world at the advent. Christ's first 
and last adversaries were those who represented the 
religion of the times. They were the men who were 
religiously conceited ; and who, under the pretence 
of sanctity, of truth and the venerableness of holy 
things, refused to let the new growth come on which 
God appoints to every generation. They were the 
religious conservatives of that day. Clamorous about 
the truths of the past, and very ignorant of the truths 
of the present, they seemed to think that all of God's 
teachings to this world were already issued ; and that 
they were the King's post, in which these teachings, 
sealed up like letters, were to be conveyed to ano- 
ther generation ; and they supposed that their busi- 
ness was that of sacred mail-carriers, to convey 
unopened and unused the sealed messages of God to 
those who should come after them. 



LESSONS FROM THE TIMES. 87 

Of course, such men would scorn the ethical acti- 
vity of their age. Men's business was to take care 
of the legacy of the past, not to plough and sow for 
new harvests. 

It was this kind of men that met Christ at every 
step ; that were shocked because he ate and drank 
like common men ; because he went among common 
people, and thought religious truth, not in the con- 
secrated language of rabbinical schools, but in the 
vernacular ; because he sat in their houses at meat 
with them ; because he gave men liberty on the Sab- 
bath day, and declared that that day was not meant 
to restrict but to help men ; because he let his dis- 
ciples sit at the table with unwashen hands ; because 
he preached to the outcast, and took the side of publi- 
cans and harlots against the respectable Pharisees ; 
in short, because he took the part of religion against 
the religious institutions ; because he took sides with 
religious spirit, which is always young and vegetat- 
ing, against religious usages, which are always ven- 
erable in proportion as they are nothing else. 

It was against this kind of religion, and these stub- 
born, conceited, unlearning, and impracticable reli- 
gious men that he uttered these words. Men who 
had apparently never suspected that God had any 
way of teaching the world except through them ; 
who would as soon have looked out into the street for 
gold and silver, as to have looked there for divine 
revelations ; and who, when God sent armies to Jeru- 
salem or drove them away, when he sent the yoke 
or broke the yoke, when he raised up world-wide 
commotions or gave peace to the foaming waves of 



88 LESSONS FROM THE TIMES. 

contention, heard no moral lesson, saw no divinity, 
but looked point blank upon God's providential deve- 
lopments without seeing God. They were yet so 
attentive to that voice which sounded a thousand 
years before upon Sinai, that they did not hear the 
silent thunder of God's voice now in their own 
streets, and right at their own door ! 

Christ rebuked them. He put their conduct in a 
striking light, by comparing it to their habits in 
trifling things. The state of the weather they could 
judge by looking at the elements of the weather. But 
the state of God's kingdom in their midst, while 
miracles were wrought, truths wonderfully spoken, 
the poor relieved, the sick graciously healed, and 
God's law of love, which they had changed to stone, 
was smitten arid caused to gush forth with divine 
water for the poor multitudes that lay athirst in the 
community — from all these things they never sus- 
pected that the kingdom of God had come nigh to 
them. 

The truth to be remarked is this, that we are bound 
to understand God's dealings with the times in which 
we live. 

Because by such discreet consideration of current 
events, we learn the nature of human conduct, and 
test the wisdom of various courses. 

Because, by such study, we come to right appre- 
hensions of God's moral government over this world. 

It is a thing to be remarked, how little benefit 
men have derived in the long experience of commer- 
cial life. 

The same mischiefs occur every ten or fifteen 



LESSONS FROil THE TIMES. 89 

years. Courses lipon which the Bible pronounced 
sentence two thousand years ago, are entered upon 
again and again, as if nothing were known of them. 
God has spoken to him who hath ears to hear, upon 
the nature of greedy selfishness, upon unscrupulous 
devices in business ; upon making haste to be rich ; 
upon pride and hard-handedness ; upon deceit and 
guile ; upon the infatuations of hope, and the supreme 
folly of unwarrantable conceit ; the blessings of con- 
tentment ; the blessings of a good name ; the bless- 
ings of God's service instead of mammon's bondage ; 
all these have been proved over and over again, and 
yet almost without impression. 

I. It is remarkable to see how much suffering 
comes upon men, not by any disease, but simply by 
difficulty of commercial breathing. 

If the human body be stricken with fever or palsy ; 
if cholera or plague attack it ; or if the sword or 
bullet smite it ; or if some weight fall suddenly and 
crush it ; or some secret wound draw out, drop by 
drop, the blood — we do not marvel. There is a cause 
adequate to the effect. But if you put a man into 
an exhausted receiver, under a bell-glass, without a 
particle of air, the mischief is just the same. No 
organ suffers, no tissue is lacerated, no muscle crushed, 
no part is poisoned, none wasted or drained of its 
vital fluids, and yet the man effectually dies. 

The course of affairs among us has not been dis- 
turbed by the unnatural invasions of war. The har- 
vests have not failed, and famine has not reached 
out its gaunt hands among us. Disease has not 
striven in our midst, nor has industry ceased for lack 



90 LESSONS FROM THE TIMES. 

either of legitimate enterprise or proper matter for 
enterprise. 

And yet this great nation, in full health, with un- 
counted abundance of harvests, in its young man- 
hood, stalwart, eager, hopeful, is suddenly brought 
up, and trembles, and staggers, as if it would lie 
down in faintness. What is the matter ? 

It is the want of air. The city cannot breathe. 
What, then, is this commercial air, which is so need- 
ful to life and activity ? It is the faith of man in 
man. It is mutual trust. It is confidence. This is 
the air which commerce breathes. And now, in our 
midst, although there have been indiscretions, there 
have been none which the country could not bear 
almost without a check. Men speak of overstocking 
the market, or over-manufacturing, of over-importa- 
tions, and of extravagance of various kinds. I do 
not say that there have not been mistakes in these 
respects, and great mistakes. But I do say that we 
are too strong a people to be brought into such con- 
fusion by mere mistakes of this kind. This country 
has such vigor, and such elements of power, that 
surface mistakes will never damage it seriously. 
There is money enough, property enough, and need 
for goods and manufacturing, but men are all para- 
lyzed to-day chiefly by fear of each other. Men 
look at the best concerns, as in times of siege they 
look at bombshells, expecting that every one will 
burst, and that the only difference between one and 
another, is in the length of the fuse, and the time it 
will take to burn out. 

But why should there be this sudden cessation 



LESSONS FROM THE TIMES. 91 

of confidence ? You trusted those men yesterday to 
go around the globe with your money, whom now 
you will not trust to carry it from the bank to the 
store ! No change has come over these men. They 
are just as honest now as then. Their morals are as 
good. Their business is as safe. On whatever foun- 
dation you stood five months ago, the materials of 
that foundation remain untouched to-day. Your 
ships are there. Your goods are there. Your shops 
are there. Your neighbors are not niggards nor 
simulating friends. They are the same men that 
you always knew, just as good, just as bad, un- 
changed either for better or for worse. But the city 
is under a spasm. No one will take things to be as 
they seem. No one trusts. Every one doubts and 
fears. 

Now it is to the last degree important to inquire. 
Why has confidence gone, and gone so suddenly and 
so completely ? Yesterday it blossomed like flowers 
over the field ; torday frost has fallen, and all are 
black and drooping ! What wind has sent that 
withering frost ? 

In reply to this inquiry, I would say that in part 
this panic of fear is without proper ground. It is 
the overaction of causes, of which I shall speak, 
which are real. But we have not stopped at the 
legitimate potency of those causes, but allowed our 
imagination to carry our fear headlong, and with it 
our confidence in each other. Merchants are now 
like men awakened in the night by the attacks of an 
enemy. All scream and run, one crying out one 
thing, another another, all stumbling over each 



92 LESSONS FROM THE TIMES. 

other with insane fear. Now there may be a cause 
for some fear, for some precautions, for some earnest 
defence. But there is, and there has been, no cause 
for the excessive reaction from hope which has taken 
place. The roots of business are sound. There 
never was, upon the whole, more health with so 
much life. And hundreds of men will be upset by 
nothing but because they are run against by af- 
frighted men. Hundreds of men will go down, and 
lose years of toil, and the fruits of honorable indus- 
try, for no adequate reason except that men are 
scared, and in their unreasonable affright, like per- 
sons in a crowd, they tread each other down. It is a 
shame ! 

I am not in business. I have not one penny in- 
vested in stocks or goods, and never had. If the 
market touches the sun, or goes to the bottom of the 
slough of despond, it carries nothing of mine with it 
either way, and I am, therefore, not biased by my 
interest. And I look upon this convulsion and trou- 
ble with unfeigned amazement, as reckless, needless, 
wanton cowardice. The business-men of this coun- 
try are suffering at this hour from a contagious 
cowardice! The whole continent is unstrung by 
nothing but fear. Nothing, I say, for that of which 
I shall speak by and by, and which is the ultimate 
of this iniquitous evil, was not of any such propor- 
tions of power as to justify any such breadth of 
effect : and fears have been added to real trouble in 
such unwarrantable proportions that it is scarcely 
immoderate to say, that we are all lightning-struck 
with fear. 



LESSONS FROM THE TIMES. 93 

And the cure, if it could but be taken, might be 
effectual in one day, as much as in a month or a 
year. Hope and trust to-morrow would set the 
blood going again, and' bring color to white faces. 
For the mischief is not in the business, but in the 
business-men — it is not in your affairs, but in you ! 

The country is like a ship under a stiff gale and a 
rolling sea ; in the watch of night, the man at the 
wheel and the watch think they see a ghost, and 
abandoning their post, they all run gibbering and 
tumbling headlong down the hatchway. The ship 
falls off and rolls in the trough of the sea, until, if 
some one does not help her, she will roll her masts 
out, or come upon her beam ends. But, if there be 
a heart of oak among them that can cure these 
frightened sailors with the thunder of imperious 
scorn and indignation— if they will go again upon 
duty, seize the wheel, set the sail, and bring the ship 
out of her wallowing, to her course again, all will be 
well! And I speak my honest conviction when I 
say, that all which the country wants just now is 
manliness. Tour banks cannot cure you. The gov- 
ernment cannot cure you. I come to your bed-side, 
and feel the pulse, and I pronounce the patient to be 
in a prostrated condition, from causeless excitement 
of fear, and my prescription is — Let there be men for 
nurses, and give them large doses of courage, to be 
taken every hour until the blood comes to the skin, 
and the patient can use his feet. Then turn him out, 
and say, Rise up, walk, and work ! 

II. But there was a beginning to this fright. There 
was cause enough for fear, but not enough for fright. 



94 LESSONS FROM THE TIMES. 

What was that cause that destroyed confidence 
and paralyzed hope ? 

A relaxation of moral integrity, and a special de- 
velopment of it in connection with the management 
of stocks, and the vast interests which they represent, 
have introduced an element of profligacy and un- 
trust worthiness, which threatens to move the foun- 
dations of trust of man in man. And unless there 
can be the infusion of moral integrity in the trans- 
actions of business-men, in the immense interests re- 
presented in markets by stocks, unless these swamps 
can be drained, and a highway of moral integrity be 
cast up for men to walk on through the poisonous 
growths of this forest, the land will suffer, season by 
season, with malaria, and commerce will never be 
free from chills and fever, until moral tonics are 
used. The conscience of stock-dealers needs qui- 
nine ! 

The boards of directors, in our greatest enter- 
prises of this kind — railroads — have permitted them- 
selves to employ the power for selfish ends, by 
unscrupulous methods. 

I believe myself to be strictly justified, when I 
say that the revelations of the last ten years show 
that in the management of these great and useful 
corporations, our most eminent business-men have 
not scrupled to do or to wink and connive at courses 
of conduct which involved directly, or indirectly, 
almost every crime against property known to our 
laws. I aver my solemn belief that most eminent 
business-men, banded together, and acting as a board 
of direction, have pursued methods which, if a single 



LESSONS FROM THE TIMES. 95 

man in his private capacity should pursue, would 
convict him irredeemably of crime, and crush him 
with ignominious punishment. 

The consequence has been, that one of the most 
important — yea, indispensable — elements of property 
in this land is so associated with deceit and fraud 
that it is likely to become a by-word and a hiss- 
ing ! 

Now, when one by one eminent financiers, who 
manage these interests, all at once like a midnight 
house on fire, burst into conflagrations of dis- 
honesty ; when next whole corporations are detected 
at games of swindling, which, if practised in the 
park with a thimble, would send a man to the 
Tombs ; when, yet further, it is found that banks are 
inveigled and are made to be left-handed partners 
in schemes that will not bear the sun ; and when, yet 
further, strong business men are discovered to have 
stepped from their legitimate calling, and to have 
lent their names to devices for obtaining funds that 
are unwarrantable even in commerce, and utterly 
abominable in morals ; when all these things are re- 
vealed, is it strange that men do not know whom to 
trust ? and that men, with David, " say in their haste 
that all men are liars ?" 

Springing from this, and coupled with it, is the 
monstrous and over-bloated sin of stock-gambling. 

There is no more sin in buying and selling stocks 
than in buying or selling bank bills, or any species 
of property. But it is one thing to buy and sell 
legitimately, and another to buy and sell as gamblers 
do. 



96 LESSONS FROM THE TIMES. 

Many honorable men pursue an honorable 
business in the brokerage of stocks. But it is quite 
notorious that millions and thousands of millions 
of dollars of stock are sold every month under the 
lawful forms of the Stock-Brokers' Exchange, which 
can be shown to differ in no moral or material re- 
spect from undisguised gambling. It is not neces- 
sary to enter minutely into the distinctions between 
right and wrong in buying or selling stocks. It is 
enough to say, that he who buys stock as a hona 
fide method of investing his funds, looking for 
dividends, or for some benefit from the interest re- 
presented by the stock, buys legitimately and with- 
out moral blame. But that whole scheme of 
buying stocks for no other purpose than to make 
money upon the bet that they will rise or that they will 
fall, is a scheme of gambling. Men that do 
it are gamblers. All the soft names on earth can- 
not be dissolved to make a varnish strong enough 
to cover the real wickedness. Men will resent the 
imputation. 'No man likes to be called a gam- 
bler. But the way to avoid the title is to avoid the 
thing. 

In this gambling game the whole community have 
more or less participated. Some devote their time to 
it. Since my day, I remember, I think, one concern 
to have failed four times ; it fails to-day, is on its 
feet to-morrow, in as good credit as ever. For when 
the business is fraud, and the customs of it are dis- 
honesties, it does not take a man long to repair any 
little cracks in his reputation. 

Merchants are forsaking their legitimate business, 



, LESSONS FROM THE TIMES. 97 

and dabbling in this pool. Their clerks, following 
their example, gamble too. Simple men, seeing 
these marvels of success, venture their hard earn- 
ings, and* go to gambling likewise. The lawyer 
follows suit ; and that there may be no want of 
moral sanction, ministers of the Gospel are found, 
not a few I am informed, secretly buying and selling 
stocks. 

Now when the company themselves are gigantic 
speculators by fraudulent and dishonest means; and 
when the stock of the company goes up and down 
the street, carrying in its hand a bowl drugged with 
gambling, and crowds rush to drink its intoxication, 
is it strange that at length the head is sick, the whole 
body faint, and that the commonwealth lies at length 
upon the ground, wallowing like one possessed, foam- 
ing, and rending itself? 

It is supposed that there are one thousand million 
dollars invested in railway property. Can this moun- 
tain of power be used against good morals, against 
commercial prudence, and the country not reel and 
stagger ? Can this prodigious weight be cast rudely 
hither and thither upon the deck and the keel lie 
level? There is not an honest man in the land 
patiently conducting a legitimate business, who 
is not in the power of these irregular forces. There 
can be no permanent security, if financiers can, 
at pleasure, draw up such enormous elements of 
power, and hold them suspended, like water-spouts, 
to burst and flood down desolation the moment they 
are touched with misfortune. And if commercial 
men will not draw tight the reins of morals upon 

5 



98 LESSONS FROM THE TIMES. 

these unprincipled men, they will have their 
own neglect to thank for the mischiefs which 
will have come upon them in some sense by their 
connivance. 

III. Now, what lessons do these times teach \ 

1. We are to learn that commercial prosperity 
stands indissolubly connected with public morals. 
In their heat, men cast aside moral scruples, as one 
would throw off his garments in a race. Where 
everybody sins together, men fondly think that their 
concord is a law of nature. Little by little success 
domineers over conscience. The permission of cus- 
tom, the sole condition of accomplishing, the fact of 
accruing wealth, with its praise and influence and 
power, these overrule moral considerations, and men 
do not hesitate to violate rectitude by ranks and mul- 
titudes. They systematize selfishness and organize 
injustice. 

But all seeds demand time between sowing and 
reaping. When first sown, thistles are as good as 
corn. But when the reaping-time comes, they that 
sow grain shall carry their bosom full of sheaves, 
and they that sow thistles shall have their skins 
pierced full of spines and poisonous prickles. In 
commercial intoxication it is as in drunkenness by 
strong drink — first ^the pleasing exhilaration, but 
afterwards the bursting headache. 

No class of men are more interested in a high tone 
of public morals than business men. Their life 
depends upon credit as much as their bodily life 
stands in air fit to breathe. 

Credit demands the solid rock of integrity. It 



LESSONS FROM THE TIMES. 99 

will not stand upon the shifting sands of custom. 
The merchant should be a Puritan. "Whoever else 
may permit the public conscience to be tampered 
with, the merchant is interested, by the whole force 
of self-interest, that the consciences of men touch 
God, and anchor there beyond the reach of tempta- 
tion. To tamper with the sanctity of the divine law, 
to admit anything to be higher in human affairs than 
religious rectitude, is preparation for unfaith and un- 
trust of man to man. 

The merchant that destroys good morals plucks 
off the planks from the bottom of the ship which 
carries him and all his goods. He will founder. He 
will be carried down, sooner or later, by inevitable 
leakage. 

2. Public indifference to immoralities, will be 
avenged as if it were participation. The bills 
which wicked men draw against the public trea- 
sury to pay for their crimes and vices, are always 
indorsed by the virtuous men of the community; 
and in the end, the sober always pay for the 
intemperate; the pure pay the expenses of the 
debauched ; the honest man pays for the knave's 
debts ; the working and frugal man pays for the 
indolent and spendthrift ; and in such times as 
these it is seen that the headlong and swindling 
speculators run the commercial world into desperate 
straits, and then the criminals step aside, and the 
sound men take the burden and carry it. In pros- 
perous times men attend to their own business and 
will not be troubled with public interests. This is a 
selfishness which God never will forget. In their 



100 LESSONS FROM THE TIMES. 

hour of distress they find out that indifference to pub- 
lic morals is itself a crime, and that Providence, in 
due season, punishes honest and good men for the 
misconduct of wicked men, which they could have 
prevented but would not. 

3. These are the times for men to detect unnamed 
vices and crimes, and give them their place and pro- 
per designation on the list of evils. 

In all vigorous communities, where enterprise at- 
tempts new things, by new measures, we may be 
sure that selfishness will pioneer conscience. Many 
things will be done, as now we clearly see they have 
been done, which are wrong to the last degree. But 
because men had not yet analyzed them or sat in 
judgment upon them by moral rules, they were per- 
mitted to go on as if right and permissible. 

God's providence judges human conduct before 
men's consciences do. And we find out what is 
wrong by the punishment with which we are sur- 
prised, rather than by the use of our moral judgment. 
It is a shame that God's whip should have to be a 
better judge and interpreter of rectitude than a 
Christian man's conscience. 

4. These times ought to point out the attention of 
men to the sure punishment of greediness. Haste 
to be rich comes more speedily through the stage 
in which they give equivalents, of skill, or benefit, 
for wealth received, into the always wicked and 
demoralizing stage in which hien desire to enter 
without giving fair equivalents for gains. This 
appetite has no bounds when once planted. It is 
a raging fever of avarice. It is the peculiar disease 



LESSONS FROM THE TIMES. 101 

of speculators, of stock-gamblers, and of all other 
gamblers. A man who deliberately purposes to 
gain wealth without earning it by some substantial 
equivalent rendered to the community, is a thief. 
He may be called, down here, by much softer 
names. But above he is unceremoniously called 
thief. Nor is God's justice silent or motionless. 
While these men are ripening, the sickle is patient ; 
but that is all that it waits for. Where now are all 
the eager financiers ? Where are those inflated spec- 
ulators that use God's great round of time and provi- 
dence as a gambler's box to throw their dice with, 
who venture a penny, and rise from the table with 
uncounted gold? Where are these greedy men and 
their greedy associates, and where are their gains 
now ? " He that hasteth to be rich hath an evil eye, 
and considereth not that poverty shall come upon 
him." God has written these words so high up that 
all financiering hands that reach around the world 
greedily cannot reach to rub them out. And every 
generation of men, whether they like the ritual 
or not, are compelled to say, Amen. At this time, 
men are affirming this truth with deep and bitter 
pronunciation. 

The ship that was struck by this mighty gale and 
well-nigh overturned, is already righting. May we 
not hope that the worst is passed ? Already streaks 
of light are appearing. There will yet be a struggle, 
but the fierceness of it is over. Some will yet go 
down, but those who are strong will stand ; and now, 
if there be Christians among these thousand mer- 
chants, who can rise a little above their own selfish- 



102 LESSONS FROM THE TIMES. 

ness, and, though in distress, go to help their fellows, 
how true and devout a gospel shall such disinterested 
and heroic conduct be ! There is many and many a 
friend whom you may cheer, encourage, and help ; 
and your coming to such in this stormy hour, will be 
to them almost like Christ walking on the sea in 
the night and tempest, pressing down the waves 
to tranquillity with his feet, and casting serenity 
into the storm from the peace of his own divine 
face. 

]STot again in a man's lifetime may it be permitted 
him to do so much for God and Christ, by heroic 
endurance, by cheerfulness amid danger by helpful- 
ness when the instincts of men would make them sel- 
fish. 

Good men! true men! Christian men! all! take 
hold of hands, put shoulder to shoulder, stand and 
make others stand! After a little more trial you 
shall come forth as Nelson's ships came from the 
smoke of battle, pierced and crippled it may be, but 
floating still, and able to float ; and afterwards, 
every shot, every wound and every loss shall 
be healed by victory, and then become insignia 
of glory! "The night is far spent, the day is at 
hand." 



CHRISTIAN CONSOLATION. 

During the summer, on western rivers, as yon 
are riding or even wading across the ford, yon may 
see, lying a little below you, great flat-bottomed 
boats, used for ferrying. During the summer, while 
waters are low, and men can cross without help and 
without danger, these craft lie moored to the shore 
with nothing to do. But when heavy rains have 
swollen the river, and the ford is drowned out, so 
that no man may dare to venture it, then travellers 
are glad to see the clumsy boat swung round, and by 
cords and poles forced across the swift running 
waters for the convenience of those who must 
pass over. 

All our emergencies are like streams. So long 
as we can cross them without help we use the ford. 
But when our affairs are beyond our own skill or 
strength, God sends round his promises which had 
lain along the shore, tied up and disused, to bear us 
over the black swelling waters. And blessed is he 
who is willing and able to venture across real trou- 
bles upon God's staunch promises. 

In times of trouble, every Christian man will find 
wonderful comfort in the psalms of David. Now 
their true colors will shine out. The psalms are like 
diamonds, which, though bright in the daylight, do 

It .3 



104 CHRISTIAN CONSOLATION. 

not give forth their peculiar brilliance until night 
and artificial light cause them to flash. And so are 
those great lyrics of the world sung not to any 
lover's lute, or even Homeric harp, but sung from 
the chords of the soul itself when God played upon 
it. They are deep as human life, wide as the earth, 
and far reaching as immortality. And in times of 
trouble men ought to walk in the garden of this Book 
and comfort themselves with its fruits and flowers. 

It is not the design of God's promises to help us 
so long as we can help ourselves. They are like 
defensive arms which men wear in a wilderness 
among robbers, not to be fired incessantly, but 
hidden for emergency, and then brought forth for 
self-protection. 

They are like a mountaineer's staff, though good 
for level ground, not meant specially for that ; but 
to be relied on chiefly among rocks and sharp accliv- 
ities. 

What is a man's faith in God good for, which only" 
holds him up when he can hold himself up without 
help, and breaks under him when he needs to lean 
upon it? What is a belief in God's special and 
particular providence worth, if it applies only 
to fair weather, and dissolves in storms of trou- 
ble ? 

If one will go back to the prophets, to David's 
experiences, he will find that God's promises were 
first made to men in the most bitter trials. They 
are not summer promises. They are not general nor 
indefinite. They were made to touch exactly such 
cases as yet occur every day. 



CHRISTIAN CONSOLATION. 105 

Are hopes ever baffled ? God lias balm for that. 
Is an honest pride sorely wounded? God has 
spoken consolation for that. Is a man's good name 
shot at ? That too has been done to ten thousand 
men before, and God girded them with promises 
which held them up. The men have died, but their 
charmed girdles are left. God's armory is full of 
them. 

Do your enemies triumph over you? There 
are blessings thick as spring flowers among old 
grasses for those who suffer evil and bear it pa- 
tiently. 

Now, while men are rowing in darkness, and 
upon a dreadful sea, they may expect to see Christ 
coming to them walking upon the water. Or, it 
may be that he is already in the ship and needs 
only the uprousing of their grief and prayer to come 
forth upon the elements, sovereign over their wild 
tumult ! 

Methinks I hear Christ saying to all his dis- 
ciples the very words which he variously pro- 
nounced while upon earth. Some are beseech- 
ing him to relieve their fear and bring back pros- 
perity. They cannot bear the thorn in their 
side that threatens to reach their heart. But 
Christ's answer is, I will not remove the trouble, 
but my grace shall be sufficient to enable you to 
bear it. 

Another bewails his misfortunes, and cries out, 
" Lord, why is this?" The reply is, "The servant is 
not greater than his Lord. It is enough for the 
disciple that he be as his Master, and the servant as 

5* 



106 CHRISTIAN CONSOLATION. 

i 

his Lord." None of ns are reduced as low as was 
Christ for our sakes. And it is a comfort to every 
penitent heart to feel, at each step down, that he 
is not going away from light and love but towards 
them. 

Christ lives near the bottom of human life, and 
that way lies the gate of heaven. They who abase 
themselves are going towards God. And when 
Christian men are going down, step by step, nearer 
the bottom, let them say, "why not? why should I 
demand for myself what my Lord and my God gave 
up freely for my sake ?" 

Men often put questions the wrong way, and 
when they are bereaved, they say, Why should I 
be afflicted? When they meet losses, they say, 
Why should I have such misfortunes ? But, would 
it not be soberer and more sensible if men should 
say, Why should not I have trouble ? Am I not a 
man in a world of trial ? Am I too good to be 
touched? Shall all God's elect since the world 
began drink of the bitter cup, and I claim exemp- 
tion ? What have I done 'that God should honor 
me ? What use have I made of my strength and 
wealth, that I should demand their continuance? 
How have I brought up my children, that I should 
be surprised if God withdrew them from me, and 
placed them in his own bosom ? Shall Christ walk 
in poverty, and I disdain that experience ? Shall he 
not have whereon to lay his head even, and I com- 
. plain in the midst of home, food, comfort, and love ? 
How very good a man must be, who can afford to 
be surprised when God unclothes him of superfluous 



CHRISTIAN CONSOLATION. 107 

wealth, and makes him walk as near to the edge of 
necessity as the best men of the world have done 
before, and still do ! 

We are not to affect stoical indifference, and still 
less rail out bitterly at wealth ; and seek, thus, to cover 
over our disappointment by a false pretence of anger. 
How much better is Paul's spirit (Phil. iv. 11), " I 
have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be 
content. I know both how to be abased, and I know 
how to abound. I am instructed both to be full and 
to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I 
can do all things through Christ that strengthen eth 
me." "Which of these extremes is the more 
difficult, it is not our purpose to consider. Far more 
difficult than either is the spirit that can play back 
and forth between them both. A Christian man's 
life is laid in the loom of time to a pattern which he 
does not see, but God does ; and his heart is a shut- 
tle. On one side of the loom is sorrow, and on the 
other is joy ; and the shuttle struck alternately by 
each, flies back and forth, carrying the thread, which 
is white or black, as the pattern needs ; and, in the 
end, when. God shall lift up the finished garment and 
all its changing hues shall glance out, it will then 
appear that the deep and dark colors were as need- 
ful to beauty as the bright and high colors. 

Meanwhile, as God's children are going through 
unwonted and bitter trials, it is affecting to see 
with what royal tenderness God stoops to comfort 
them. As a parent that convoyed his flock of 
children, in a flight by night, from a savage foe, 
would whisper words to this one, and cheer that 



108 CHRISTIAN CONSOLATION. 

one — now lifting Tip, and then for a little way even 
carrying some, meanwhile encouraging them, and 
saying, it will soon be light, hold on, and hold 
out, my brave children, we are almost through ; so 
God hovers about his flock in days of sore adversity, 
saying, "Be of good cheer; because I live ye shall 
live also ; I will never leave you nor forsake you. 
I am not angry, nor gone away from you ; I chasten 
because I love you. Whom the Lord loveth he 
chasteneth. Ye are my sons. Cast all your cares 
upon me, for I care for you. Let not your hearts be 
troubled, neither be ye afraid. If God be for you, 
who can be against you. Think it not strange con- 
cerning this fiery trial, as if some strange thing 
had befallen you. Since the world began, I have 
scourged every son that I ever received. Blessed is 
he that endureth affliction. To him that overcometh 
I will give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the 
midst of the Paradise of God !" 

Wherefore comfort one another with these words ! 



TROUBLES. 

Whoever enters this world with an expectation 
of finding or making a life of uninterrupted joy, will 
enter blindfold, but trouble will quickly open his 
eyes. The wish to be happy is natural and normal. 
But the expectation of happiness unalloyed is most 
unreasonable. Life is a probation more or less 
severe with all, but severe in different degrees to dif- 
ferent men. 

Some seem only dipped into life, as we plunge 
children into a bath. They come for a moment 
within the horizon and depart again. 

Some appear to have answered the earthly con- 
ditions of their existence in a few years. There is 
no interpreter to God's Providence, and God is silent. 

Some persons appear to have an end in life 
which requires an even and balanced mind and 
temperament. They pass smoothly on, neither ex- 
alted by great joys nor depressed by burdensome 
sorrows. 

Others are sent into life armed to resist the pres- 
sure of external things. They have hope, courage, 
elasticity, and they meet and vanquish assaults with 
almost gladness. 

But others still there are to whom is appointed a 
much more difficult task. Their troubles are within. 

109 



110 TROUBLES. 

As a shipmaster who carries an insubordinate and 
mutinous crew has his enemies in his own ship, so 
many men have a disposition so wild, so untempered, 
a mind so unbalanced, that their chief work of life 
is in their own souls. 

Others still are children of special sorrow. God 
seems to deal with them as Apollo is fabled to have 
dealt with Niobe — slaying all their hopes. 

Many persons carry their own troubles; others 
find them in their social dependence and connec- 
tions. But there are many troubles that do not seem 
to bear any relation to our wisdom or to moral obli- 
quity. They are like silver arrows shot from the 
bow of God, and fixed, inextractible, in the human 
heart. 

In such a world it is folly to expect exemp- 
tion. They who escape have reason to fear evil. 
But some there are who meet their troubles with 
such cheer that they hardly remember them as 
trials. As the sun converts clouds to a glorious 
drapery, firing them with gorgeous hues, and draping 
the whole horizon with its glorious costume, and 
writing victory in fiery colors along the vanquished 
front of every cloud, so sometimes a radiant hqart 
lets forth its hope upon its sorrow and all the black- 
ness flies, and troubles that trooped to appall, crowd 
around as a triumphal group around the steps of a 
victor. 

E"ow these need not fear that they are not the sons 
of God. They seem but little tried because they 
have such singular victory. But those who have no 
troubles, and gain no victories, have never striven 



TROUBLES. Ill 

for a higher place in life than nature gave. A man 
without aspiration is stale indeed. But aspiration 
brings endeavor, and endeavor strife, and strife many 
grievous woundings. 

It is unwise, therefore, to rear our children to avoid 
trouble. Instinct will do that sufficiently. It should 
be ours, rather, to teach them how to vanquish one 
part, and how to endure the other. And enduring is 
the greater. 

Secular troubles, or troubles from without — trou- 
bles by men, troubles from affairs, troubles of busi- 
ness, should always be met with greater force than 
they bring. 

Many troubles can be cut at the root and cease. 
Many can be strangled. Many can be overcome 
by direct attack. We should count worldly trouble 
to be only an excitant, and by it be aroused to 
an energy and force which otherwise we could not 
have felt. Such trials are only occasions of victory. 
Meet and resist them ! 

Some troubles and trials can be thrown off. Dis- 
eases are repelled by great animal vigor ; and trou- 
bles may be repelled by great mental vigor. Every 
one perceives this in his own experience. In the 
morning we can carry the world like Atlas. At noon 
we stoop and find it heavy. At night the world 
crushes us down and we are under it. 

The very troubles of to-day were about you yes- 
terday, and you did not know them. For you were 
engaged in things that fired the mind with higher 
excitements. Very many troubles of life are nothing 
but your weakness. Stand up and they are gon 3 



112 TROUBLES. 

They are like gnats, which, while one is still, settle 
and bite, but rising up and working, the whole swarm 
fly off or do but buzz. But the moment the man 
rests, they alight. Thus, activity is exemption, and 
sleep is defeat. 

The want of proper occupation is the cause of 
more than half of the petty frets of life. And right 
occupation will be a medicine for half the minor ills 
of life. A man without any proper aim in life, with- 
out moral inspiration, too rich to be industrious, and 
a prey to the thousand frets of unoccupied leisure, 
sometimes sets himself to pray against his troubles. 
Now a man might as well pray against the particles 
of sand in Sahara as a lazy man pray against petty 
troubles. 

Therefore it happens, sometimes, that bankruptcy 
brings to a man what all his wealth failed to give — 
happiness ; for he has real troubles, and trouble is a 
good medicine for trouble. There is a moral counter- 
irritation. 

Many troubles, unlike the above, that are real, 
can be medicated by Hope. For so is it, that we 
can bear much when the prospect before us is cheer- 
ful and assured. If a man lets his troubles come 
between him and the sun, they will cast a shadow 
and interpose their substance too. But if he will 
put himself between the sun and his troubles, then 
his own form will fall upon the over-shadowed evil 
and half eclipse it. It is for this that hope is given. 
"We are saved by hope, it is said. Hope is an anchor 
that holds on to the bottom while the storms handle 
the ship, and enables it to outride the tempest. 



TROUBLES. 113 

Happy is lie that has hope. It is a heart-spring. 
If a man had no elasiticity in his foot, and could 
spring over no pool, nor ditch, nor roughness, but 
went leadenly through them all, how burdensome 
would his journey be ! But by an elastic ankle he 
springs over a hundred hindrances, and never knows 
their annoyance. Many of our troubles should be 
oversprung. 

Many troubles in life cease when we cease to nurse 
them. We take them up, we dandle them upon 
our knee, we carry them in our bosom. When they 
seem to sleep, we wake them up, and insist upon 
sharpening their point. We ruminate our cud, 
which was a thistle at first, and make mean and fret- 
ful martyrs of ourselves. If one will be unhappy, 
if bitter is craved by the palate, there is no need for 
remedy. 

Many real troubles there are which will cease 
the moment our heart accepts them and submits 
itself to them as a part of a Divine Providence. 
For many, many troubles are but the strain which 
we endure when God would carry us the right way, 
and we insist upon going the wrong ! When two 
walk arm in arm, if one would turn and the other 
would not, either they must pull diversely or else 
must separate. But God never lets go his child- 
ren's arms, and if they struggle and hold back, 
they are dragged. Let them submit to be led, nor 
struggle, nor hold back. In that instant the trouble 
goes. 

This is specially true of all troubles which involve 
loss of property and worldly comfort, as though they 



114 



TROUBLES. 



were necessary to happiness, when myriads live most 
happily without them. 

Many of onr troubles are instantly cured by hold- 
ing them up in the light of God's countenance. 
They arise from seeing things in a false light, 
or from seeing things in the half-light of this world. 
When they are surveyed in the great sphere and in 
the light of heaven, they dissolve like snow-flakes. 

This is the reason of the experience of many 
Christians. They go under a cloud, and finally, 
pressed and burdened they go to prayer, and rising 
into the presence of God, filled with hope and 
cheer, when they begin to think of their petition, it 
is gone. The air of heaven has health in it. There 
is peace in the very presence of God. They that 
touch the hem of his garment are often as much 
healed as those whom he takes by the hand ! 

The same is true of music ; a little hymn, child- 
warbled, has sometimes done more for a man in one 
moment than all his own philosophy, his strivings, 
and his labor ! For a hymn is like the touch given 
to the servant's eyes by the prophet. It opens the 
air, and it is full of God's messengers. 

There be troubles that may be worn out. A pa- 
tient endurance will destroy them. Like tides, they 
cannot be checked nor resisted when risnig. But, 
like tides, if patiently waited upon, they will turn 
and flow out of themselves ! 

Nay, rather let me say that they are inundations 
of freshets. When God means mercy to the seasons, 
he sends clouds to the mountains. From their 
bosom all the mountain-springs nurse, and are fulL. 



TROUBLES. . 115 

But when from the fullness of the rain the streams 
swell, and branch adds to branch its tribute, the 
over-swollen river spreads wide over all the neigh- 
boring meadows. Trees wade deep ; bushes, half- 
hidden, seem cut iii twain, and the earth is lost. But 
with a few days the stream sucks back its waters 
and drives them out to the sea. Now see the 
drenched earth all aslime. Mud, mud, mud ! But 
go again in two months and see the children of the 
mud — grass that waves its little forest — flowers that 
carry heaven in their bosom — corn and grain that 
exult in richness and vigor. Troubles come to us 
like mire and filth. But, when mingled with the soil, 
they change to flower and fruit. 



PHASES OF THE TIMES. 

The art of being happy is less cultivated in this 
land than in almost any other. We make extravagant 
preparations for it ; we give no bounds to our enter- 
prise ; we heap up material ; we go through an im- 
mense experience preparatory to being happy. But, 
in the main, it is the very thing which we forget to 
extract from an abundant preparation. Content- 
ment is a quality which few know how to reconcile 
with aspiration, and still less with enterprise. Satis- 
faction, therefore, is the bright ideal of the future. 
It never blossoms to-day. It is always for to-morrow. 
Men never come up with their hope. The short and 
intense excitements which we misname enjoyment 
are paroxysms, not steady pulsations. At length it 
comes to pass that men do not enjoy life in the midst of 
heaped-up prosperity. And amid reverses they be- 
moan themselves when the topmost leaves of the 
banyan tree are plucked by the wind, and refuse to 
shelter themselves beneath the vast breadth of what 
remains. 

The whole land stands in surprise and complaint 
at a sudden and violent revolution. Our disasters are 
in every mouth. The change of circumstances is the 
fertile theme., A little while ago and we could see 
nothing but brightness, and now nothing but dark- 
ness. Then it was noon all the while ; now it is 

116 



PHASES OF THE TIME8. 117 

midnight. In neither case was there balance and 
just judgment. The light was too bright then, and 
the darkness is too dense now. It becomes us to 
estimate — to sit down and put one thing over against 
another, and to frame a judgment upon a view of all 
sides of our case. 

There are undoubted evidences of the advance of 
the world in true civilization. "Withiruthe last ten 
years the most extraordinary wars and civil revo- 
lutions have taken place on the globe. Once such a 
combination and movement as we have but lately 
beheld, would have affected the whole globe with 
terror. Since the French Emperor put his bloody 
foot upon the steps of the throne, there have been set 
on foot the most wide-spread combinations of govern- 
ments, the most prodigious armies and navies, such as 
turn the historic Armada into a mere affair of yachts. 
Once the globe would hate trembled to the footsteps 
of such an unparalleled war ! So much did the spirit 
of the past dwell in military things, that, a hundred 
or two hundred years ago, such a history would have 
drawn with it the world's nerve and blood and vitality. 
But now all western Europe rose up and the world 
did not tremble. All Russia gathered together and 
the Orient did not feel it. And the pounding of war in 
that gigantic conflict disturbed the world as little as a 
thresher's flail upon the barn-floor disturbs the earth 
beneath it. Not even the nations that carried such 
battle in their hands thought it heavy. Great 
Britain took but her left hand. Not a wheel 
stopped in her manufactories. Not an acre the less 
was tilled in France ; and the' world upon this side 



118 PHASES OF THE TIMES. 

read the account simply as news. It produced no 
more effect than the last serial story that drags its 
long and tedious tail through the cheap and stupid 
magazines. 

But now, upon these western shores, over-eager 
capitalists and operators have pushed their trade too 
far and built their plans too fast. A bank explodes 
in Ohio ; then a line of banks gives way in Pennsyl- 
vania. This shook the continent more than all the 
cannonade of Sevastopol. Next, the banks of New 
York suspended. All business stopped. Society 
was tremulous from top to bottom ! The tidings are 
borne across the ocean. That wonderful island, 
whose top is narrow, but whose base is broad as the 
whole earth, began to quiver, and that silent panic 
brought her down quicker than an axe brings down 
the ox. "War could not make her plumes to quiver ; 
but Commerce, by a look, cast her upon the ground. 
And it stands apparent to the world by the grandest 
demonstration,' that in valid influence Commerce has 
supplanted War, and is its master. The general's 
sword, the marshal's truncheon, the king's crown, are 
no longer the strongest things. The world's strength 
lies in the million hands of producers and exchangers. 
Power has shifted. No matter who reigns — the mer- 
chant reigns. No matter what the form of government 
is, the power of the world is in the hands of the people. ( 
The king's hand is weaker than the banker's. War 
cannot convulse the world, but Capital can. 

This should not be mentioned as if it were an un- 
mixed good. It has its own mischiefs, for every 
event grows in a husk, which at first proserves and 



PHASES OF THE TIMES. 119 

then climbers the grain ; and commerce has its dan- 
gers and tyrannies ; but it marks the direction the 
world is pursuing, and the progress of the march. 
The growth which is everywhere to be witnessed is 
away from dynasties, from imperious governments, 
and towards the great masses of men. This is one 
of the signs of the times which wise men are able to 
discern in the present crisis. It is true, a man that 
was rich yesterday, but is bankrupt to-day, may not 
find consolation in being told that his facile destruc- 
tion was one of the straws which show which way the 
wind blows ; but, notwithstanding, it does show it ; 
and though we are sorry for the immediate sufferers, 
we do not think it needful to refuse some alleviation. 

The conditions of growth in our age and nation 
are unlike thdse of past times, and are not to be 
measured by them. Germany, France, Great 
Britain, began in a barbarous state, and through 
centuries developed their civilization. Their growth 
was slow ; their wants did not require any ingenuity 
or skill for supply. Slowness gives nations a chance 
to be steady. Our nation had no interior infancy. 
Our fathers were ripe men, for their age. Society in 
America has begun, at the beginning, with all the wants 
which, abroad, came gradually through centuries. 

The inevitable result of such condition was two- 
fold : Now to give an extraordinary impulse to our 
people in industrial directions ; and to oblige them 
to devise every possible means of operating. With 
no accumulated capital, with no past behind us, that 
had builded towns, roads, and structures for us — 
we yet had the same tastes, the same intellectual 



120 PHASES OF THE TIMES. 

wants, the same scale of social life, the same or 
higher domestic needs that older nations had. It 
was impossible that men who were under such 
conditions — a quick, enterprising, industrious, ambi- 
tious people — should not be powerfully influenced, 
and that in the earlier stages of national life the 
propelling power should not be in excess, and the 
consolidating and steadying power relatively de- 
ficient. Never was there a people truer to their cir- 
cumstances. Had they tried to live in the past they 
would have been like a plant trying to grow away 
from the light. God put their life in their future. 
They pressed towards it. Even the present was but 
one broad step, by which to go further towards the 
future. And all the developments among us have 
been those which were necessary — in' the imperfect 
way in which the world always grows — to this 
answering of our people to their true nature ! 

The central faculty which warms, incites, and 
intensely influences the American mind, is hope. 
And while we are served and blessed by this 
power we must take it, with all its limitations and 
evils. Hope tempered a little, and judiciously 
combined, works out full and fruitful enterprises, 
and gives light and pleasure to industry. But this 
feeling is subject to various conditions and diseases. 
Gambling, in the worst sense, is nothing but the 
last and worst development of diseased hope. The 
distance and difference between the mild beginning 
and the terrific end of this action is immense. The 
risks and ventures of the stock market is another 
source. The element of speculation is derived 



PHASES OF THE TIMES. 121 

from the same feeling. Hence nationally, and as 
a fact of our race, Hope is large. Past and pres- 
ent circumstances have powerfully developed and 
inspired it. It has given to us in our circumstances, 
a character of adventurousness not only, but a great 
part of our material prosperity has arisen from this 
very thing. 

To construct thirty or forty thousand miles of rail- 
road in twenty-five years could never have been 
done by merely prudent men. There seems an 
overruling element in affairs that provides ten- 
dencies to fit the exigency. If our border men were 
not rude, coarse, hard — nature and circumstances 
would be too much for them. Even when cut off 
they are less a loss. Living or dying they seem 
fitted to their place and work. And so in early 
periods of commercial development there is need of 
pioneers. Men who have nothing to lose and every- 
thing to gain in venturesome enterprises, must take 
the lead. We are fortunate in having such. We 
owe to them an immense obligation. It is the 
ruined men of the community who make the pros- 
perous men. They went before. They ventured as 
no others would have done. They foresaw, or thought 
they did. They had that mind element which made 
it as easy for them to do this, as it would have been 
hard for others. 

Even in the mutations and upsettings of this class 
of men there is to be observed a wisdom of affairs. 
It does not hurt a sanguine man, full of spring and 
hope, to be destroyed. Some men are like some of 
the earlier forms of worms ; cutting them in pieces 

6 



122 PHASES OF THE TIMES. 

only multiplies them. Every fragment gathers up a 
head, and finishes out a new tail, and moves along. 
You may turn a life-boat over and it will right 
again; but it would not do to upset a frigate or 
line-of-battle-ship. Many men in New York get so . 
used to failures that they expect them as much as 
ten-pins expect to be tripped up ; it is part of the 
game. If they do not expect it, their neighbors 
do. 

When a community is moving under such influence 
and pressure, there is neither legislation, nor expe- 
rience, nor any other regulating power, that can pre- 
vent gradual and increasing tendency to excess. Some 
men will live too fast. Some will venture too far. 
Gradually, competitions and strivings in a large and 
free acting community will engender heat. Heat will 
carry people further than they have calculated ; it will 
tend to develop that most powerful element — credit, 
which carries in its right hand blessings, and in its left 
curses, but ten blessings to one curse. In varying 
periods, ten, fifteen, and twenty years, according to 
circumstances, men will have ventured so far along, 
that a reckoning day will come. And such crises are 
but that relief which the great system needs. It is 
but a fever, arising from the reaction of nature — the 
throwing off of morbid matter. 

In this process, sufferings of pride, honor, and 
even personal and bodily, tend to keep men's faces 
too close to their affairs to let them see the benefit 
of the whole operation. One would think by the 
exclamations of ruin, disaster, dismay, that crises 
are deadly ! Almost the whole evil resjbs upon indi- 



PHASES OF THE TIMES. 123 

viduals, without inflicting any considerable damage 
upon society. And even that which falls upon indi- 
viduals is temporary, and compensated by collateral 
benefits, which, upon the whole, in a large way of 
judging, are beneficial. 

It should be borne in mind, and thought of with 
thankfulness, that although a heavy pecuniary pres- 
sure has been resting on the community, the great 
incalculable mercy of health, the land throughout, 
was never more eminent than now ; that abundance 
for man's sustenance was never greater, and for the 
general national want never so available ; that it is 
only particular points that suffer ; that the average 
virtue, intelligence, and progress of the masses is 
onward, and not backward ; that we are not tangled 
or wasted by foreign wars ; that our great national 
struggles are pointing towards victory ; that free 
labor was never so strong as now ; and that discussion 
never was so free, so thorough, and so satisfactory. 

It should be borne in mind, also, that with this 
crisis nothing perishes. No ships will rot, as under 
embargo ; stores will not fall down-; not a wheel will 
rust, but only rest ; the railroads whose creation has 
cost us so much, are created, and will not go back, 
but thunder on. Not an acre will go again to forest ; 
not a seed will rot. We shall hold all the substantial 
elements gained, losing no art, no science, no ideas, 
no habits, no skill, no industry, nothing but a little 
temporary comfort; and for that we shall receive 
back steadiness, safety, reality, and consolidation, 
worth a thousand fold. 



THE FULLNESS OF GOD. 

Many passages of the Scripture are like hundreds 
of wayside flowers, which for months and years 
are unnoticed by us, simply because we have been 
accustomed from our childhood to see them without 
stooping to pluck or to examine them. Many of 
the homeliest flowers would appear transcendently 
beautiful if we would take the trouble to study 
them minutely, to magnify their parts, and to 
bring out their constituent elements. And so, we 
were taught to read the Bible so early, in the 
family and in the village school, and we have so 
often and often walked along the chapters, that we 
have beaten a dusty path in them, and some of 
their most precious and beautiful things are neither 
precious nor beautiful to us, simply because we look 
at them and not into them. Many parts of the Bible 
may be compared to those exquisite creations of art 
which are sometimes found in old cathedrals ; they 
have collected dust and grime and weather-stains, 
that hundreds of persons go past them every day, 
never cleansing them, never restoring feature nor 
color, nor bringing out the artist's embodied thought, 
so that they are quite unconscious, till they see them 
restored in the picture of some book, or till some 
enthusiastic Ruskin brings them out, and teaches us 

124 



THE FULLNESS OP GOD. 125 

how beautiful are the things that we have slighted as 
uncomely. So the Scriptures are often overlaid, and, 
frequently, some of the passages that really are the 
'most resplendent are those which seem only common 
and ordinary. 

Just such a passage is to be found in the third 
chapter of the Ephesians, in which Paul says : " For 
this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our 
Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in hea- 
ven and earth is named, that he would grant you, ac- 
cording to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened 
with might by His Spirit in the inner man ; that 
Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith ; that ye, 
being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to 
comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and 
length, and depth, and height ; and to know the love 
of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might 
be filled with all the fullness of God." What a pas- 
sage is this ! But this is not all. This is a prayer ; 
and the apostle having made a prayer which few 
men can climb, takes a still higher flight, and says : 
" Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abun- 
dantly above all that we ask or think, according to 
the power that worketh in us, unto Him be glory in 
the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, 
world without end. Amen." 

These words are, throughout, a sublime strain 
against despondency. Paul was in prison. " For 
this cause," the chapter begins, " I, Paul the pri- 
soner." His design was to present such a view of 
the fullness of God's heart, and of the grandeur of his 
administration, as should be an offset against any 



126 THE FULLNESS OF GOD. 

possible weakness, disaster, overthrow, or trouble in 
life, to Christians both as individuals and as churches. 

It is a presentation of God in such a light as shall 
enkindle praise. "Now unto Him " — the very words 
indicate the mood of devout ascription. He would 
excite joy and adoration in view of God's royal gene- 
rosity and large-heartedness. The Divine generosity 
is measured not only by our wants, but by our 
thoughts and desires above our wants, and it equals 
and transcends both. He is " able to do exceeding 
abundantly above all that we ask or think." 

The word " abundance" expresses the idea of more 
than enough. u Enough " is a measuring word. It 
is the complete filling of a given measure. It satisfies 
the demand. It just equals the want. But " abund- 
ance " is something over and above. It is " enough 
and to spare." A handful of berries or dried fruits 
given to a pilgrim who is ready to perish of hunger, 
might be enough to stay his strength and satisfy his 
appetite ; but if instead of this, the kind heart of 
sympathy should throw open the garden-gate and the 
orchard, and say to him, "Go in, pluck and eat," 
even when the lively appetite had sated itself upon 
the nearest fruits, there would still be on every bush 
and bough, in hundreds of rows and ranks, through- 
out the garden and the orchard, multitudes of kinds 
and the utmost abundance in quantity, of sweet and 
delicious fruits, which he could not begin to eat nor 
even to taste. In the one case he would have 
simply "enough," in the other "abundance." 

Saith the armorer, " I will not be wasteful," and 
he uses steel with an economic eye in forging the 



THE FULLNESS OF GOD. 127 

blade, and the smith measures his iron for each pur- 
pose. So he that pays a debt at the bank lays down 
the exact amount to a penny, but no more. The 
apothecary takes the physician's prescription, and 
weighing it out allows himself no generosity in 
measuring the ingredients of the medicine, but puts 
it up by drachms and scruples with rigid exacti- 
tude. So God does not measure in creating, or in 
sustaining, or in administering. On the other hand, 
the thought of God which the apostle conveys is that 
of a being of magnificent richness, who does every- 
thing in overmeasure. The whole divine character 
and administration, the whole conception of God set 
forth in the Bible and in nature, is of a being of 
magnificence and munificence, of abundance and 
superabundance. Did you ever take the trouble to 
look at a lazy bank that bears nothing for itself? It 
has no trees growing out of it for grateful shade, 
and no vines with cooling clusters, and no grass 
which herds may browse upon, and no flowers that 
lap over it, and yet the hair of ten thousand reeds 
will be combed upon its brow, and it will be spotted 
and patched with moss, of ten thousand patterns of 
exquisite beauty, so that any artist who, in all his 
life, should produce one such thing, would make 
himself a master-spirit in art, and immortal in fame. 
God's least thought in the barrenest places of nature 
is more prolific than man's greatest abundance, God 
is a being of great thoughts, great feelings, great 
actions. Whenever he does anything, he never does 
it narrowly, certainly not meanly. He never cuts 
out such a pattern, and then works up to it with even 



128 THE FULLNESS OP GOD. 

edge. He is a royal Creator, who says to the 
earth, " Let it swarm abundantly," and to the sea, 
" Let it be endlessly filled." He touches the sand 
of the shore, and it stands forth as a representative 
of the abundance of his thought. He spreads out the 
heavens, and no man can count the fiery stars. He 
orders the seasons, and they all speak in their end- 
less procession of this one thought of God — His ever- 
lasting abundance ! 

But " abundance " is a relative word. What is 
abundance for a wayfarer is not abundance for a 
shepherd. What was abundant for a nomad, a wan- 
dering shepherd, would not be for a settled farmer, 
with crops and stock, with barns and houses. But 
what is abundant for a farmer, would not be for 
a merchant ; and what is abundant for a merchant 
would be very sparse and scant for a prince; and 
even among princes there is great difference of 
degree. The abundance of a petty German prince 
would be poverty for the court of the royal Czar. 
Now put the word, with its relative and increased 
significance, upon God. Divine abundance! The 
fullness of God! It is not in the power of man 
to conceive it! If God might be supposed to 
have worked narrowly anywhere it would be on 
the earth, his footstool. But the earth is infinitely 
full of God's thought. And yet, great as the earth 
is, absolutely it is relatively little, and all symbols 
and figures drawn from, earthly things stop this side 
of the divine idea of abundance. 

But the apostle says, " Now unto him that is able 
to do exceeding abundantly." What a vision he 



THE FULLNESS OF GOD. 129 

must have had ! How grandly in that moment did 
the divine thought rise before his enrapt mind, 
when he so linked words together, seeking by com- 
binations to express what no one word had the 
power to flash forth. He could not by the mightiest 
single word express his own thought and feeling, 
and so he joined golden word with golden word, as if 
he fain would encompass it with a chain ! 

But Paul employs a measure of comparison 
even over and above all this, " above all that 
we can ask or think." That is, above the measure 
of all human aspirations. How much can a man 
ask or think? "When the deepest convictions 
of sin are upon him, in his hour of deep despond- 
ency, in critical and trying circumstances, when fears 
come upon his soul as storms came on the lake of 
Galilee, consider how much a man would then ask, 
and how much more think ! Or, when love swells 
every vein in his soul, and makes life as full as 
mountains make the streams in spring-time, and hope 
is the sun by day and the moon by night, in those 
gloriously elate hours in which he seems no longer 
fixed to space and time, but, springing as if the body 
were forgotten by the soul, wings his way through 
the realms of aspiration and conception, consider 
how much a man then thinks ! 

All books are dry and tame compared with that 
great unwritten book prayed in the closet. The 
prayers of exiles! The prayers of martyrs! The 
prayers of missionaries ! The prayers of the Wal- 
denses ! The prayers of the Albigenses ! The 
prayers of the Covenanters ! The sighs, the groans, 

6* 



130 THE FULLNESS OF GOD. 

the inarticulate cries of suffering men, whom tyrants 
have buried alive in dungeons — whom the world may 
forget, but God never ! If some angel, catching them 
as they were uttered, should drop them down from 
heaven, what a liturgy they would make! Can 
any epic equal those unwritten words that pour into 
the ear of God out of the heart's fullness ! 

Still more, what epic can equal the unspoken 
words, that never find the lip, but go up to heaven 
in unutterable longings and aspirations ! Words are 
but the bannerets of a great army ; thoughts are the 
main body of the footmen. "Words show here and 
there a little gleam in the air, but the great multi- 
tude of thoughts march unseen below. Words can- 
not follow aspiration even in its tamer flights ; still 
less when it takes wings and flies upward, borne by 
the breath of God's holy spirit. I see the gulls from 
my window day by day, making circuits against the 
north wind. They mount up above the masts of ves- 
sels in the stream, and then suddenly drop almost to 
the water's edge, flying first in one direction and then 
in another, that they may find some eddy unobstructed 
by that steady blowing blast, until they turn finally 
with the wind, and then like a gleam of light their 
white wings flash down the bay faster than any eye 
can follow them! So when men's aspirations are 
borne by some divine wind towards heaven, they 
take swift upward flight, and no words can follow 
them ! 

Consider what a soul thinks in yearnings for 
itself, and in yearnings even more for others ; what 
a saint thinks in hoars of vision and aspiration, when 



THE FULLNESS OF GOD. 131 

he reflects how all his life long, through good report 
and through evil report, through manifold trials of 
temper, of mind, of feeling in his family and out, 
the hand of God has led him every day, and his cup 
has been filled to overflowing ; consider what a dying 
man thinks in view of death and of judgment and 
immortality awaiting him beyond the grave ! What 
wonderful thoughts ! "What wonderful feelings ! 
And yet the apostle's measurement is more than all 
these, for he says : " Now unto him that is able to do 
exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or 
think!" How true it is that God's riches are un- 
searchable ! 

This is the idea of God toward which men ought 
always to repent. It is sometimes supposed that 
repentance is drudgery. It is drudgery in a mean 
man, but in no one else. There is a kind of mean 
repentance that needs to be repented of. But when 
a child knows that his misconduct has really hurt a 
loving parent, the child is more pained than the pa- 
rent. When a noble spirit has done wrong to a 
friend, through some misunderstanding that has 
sprung up between them, such a man demands the 
liberty of restoring himself more than the other de- 
mands that he shall restore himself. When we have 
injured a friend, it is our privilege to make it good. 
It is necessary to our thought of manhood that we 
should repair a wrong done. How much more when 
we have wronged Christ, our elder brother, our 
redeemer, our friend, our joy, and our comfort, 
should we make haste to repent — not as a duty, but 
as a sweet privilege ; not with the thought that our 



132 THE FULLNESS OF GOD. 

repentance is a necessity made so by him, but made 
necessary by our own honor and conscience. To 
sit down in a corner, and to cry so much, and 
to feel so bad, and to mourn so long, is not repent- 
ance. True repentance springs out of the most gene- 
rous feelings of a Christian heart. It is a man's 
better nature triumphing over his lower and meaner. 
A Christian should never say, " I must repent," but 
"Let me repent." It is the goodness of God that 
should lead us to repentance, not his justice and his 
terrors. Many persons suppose that God sits on the 
throne of the heavens as storm-clouds that float in 
summer skies, full of bolts and lightnings ; and they 
are either repelled, or they think they must come to 
him under the covert of some excuse. But repent- 
ance ought to lead us to God as toward light, to- 
ward summer, toward heaven made glorious with 
his presence, toward his everlasting goodness. His 
eye is not dark with vengeance, nor his heart turbu- 
lent with wrath, and to repent toward his justice and 
vindictiveness must be always from a lower motive 
than toward his generosity and his love. 

It is with such a conception of God that Christians 
should come before him with their wants. It is a 
glorious comfort that God's love is as infinite as his 
power. We are all apt to think of his power as in- 
finite, and we call him omnipotent ; but we too often 
forget that his love also is infinite. It has no end, 
no measure, no bound. A man's generous feelings 
are often like the buds at this season of the year — 
wrapped up in coverings to keep them from the 
selfishness and coldness of the world. By and by 



THE FULLNE6S OF GOD. 133 

they may burst out and bloom, yet now they are cir- 
cumscribed. But we do not have in ourselves the 
measure of the love of God. How base it is, then, 
when we have some gift to ask of him, to go with 
shrinking confidence and with piteous look, as though 
there were need of importunity. Is it possible, if 
with men "it is more blessed to give than to re- 
ceive," that it is not infinitely more with God ? To 
a true Christian heart, next to the pain of being un- 
able to do for those who are in want, is the pleasure 
of being approached by them, when we have it in our 
power to help them. Is it not the same, and in an 
infinitely higher degree with God? The happiest 
being in the universe is God, because he has an in- 
finite desire of benevolence, and infinite means of 
gratifying it. There is with him no limitation, either 
of heart or hand. 

Such a view of God, habitually taken, will deliver 
us from unworthy fears, and will inspire in us great 
boldness of approach, and access with confidence, 
unto the throne of his grace. It will tend to comfort 
Christians who are in despondency respecting their 
rectitude through life, their victory in death, and 
their glorification in heaven; for these things are 
thus made to stand, not in a Christian's feeble desire 
for them, but on God's infinite desire and abundant 
grace. When stars, first created, start forth upon 
their vast circuits, not knowing their way, if they 
were conscious and sentient, they might feel hope- 
less of maintaining their revolutions and orbits, and 
might despair in the face of coming ages ! But, 
without hands or arms, the sun holds them ! With- 



134 THE FULLNESS OF GOD. 

out cords or bands, the Solar King drives them 
■unharnessed on their mighty rounds without a single 
mis-step, and will bring them in the end to their 
bound, without a single wanderer. But the sun 
is but a thing, itself driven and held ; and shall not 
He, who created the heavens, and appointed all the 
stars to their places, and gave the sun his power, 
be able to hold you by the attraction of his heart, the 
strength of his hands, and the omnipotence of his 
affectionate will ? 

It is this view of God that the Apostles taught. 
We read it on every page of Paul and Peter and 
James and John — everywhere in the New Testa- 
ment. What was the beginning? "Peace on 
earth, good- will to men !" And what was the last 
word that was heard ringing through the air before 
the message was sealed, and the vision failed ? " The 
spirit and the bride say, Come ; let him that heareth 
say, Come ; let him that is athirst, Come ; and 
whosoever will, let him come and take of the 
water of life freely." Whosoever will ! That 
is the alpha and the omega! That is the begin- 
ning and the ending ! That is the offer ; that is the 
promise. And what shall be the response of every 
Christian heart, if it be not those final and sublimest 
words of the great Revelator, " Even so, Lord Jesus, 
Come quickly?" 



CHKIST m YOU, THE HOPE OF GLORY. 

In journeying through a hilly country we are 
often able to see only the objects close at hand, the 
windings of the road, the ravines, or the forest-covered 
portions of the path, hiding the connection of one 
part with another. Now and then we come to an 
open summit lifted up as a watch-tower over all the 
region, and the whole scene breaks upon the eye at 
one view. The separate steps which we made are in- 
visible ; the particular dells and hills are now but 
lights and shadows of a great whole which fills the 
eye. ^ 

It is thus that we journey through life, occupied 
with single hours and single days ; with successive 
individual labors and cares ; we rise over the sum- 
mits of individual successes or joys, and are chilled 
in the intervals of trouble and sorrow. But now 
and then, there is some experience, whose nature 
it is to lift man up above all his daily round, 
and to flash forth to his conception the whole 
past of his life, the whole prospect of it. Yes- 
terday, in his counting-room or shop, question of 
life to come and immortality seemed so unreal as 
to suggest a painful doubt of their reality, and the 
themes of religion, exhaling like dews, from all 
tangible things, seemed to hang so high in the air of 
meditation as to be but vanishing films — the merest 

135 



136 CHRIST IN YOU, THE HOPE OF GLORY. 

fleece of vapor. But to-morrow, God's providence 
strikes down upon him, no matter by wliat imple- 
ment, and lie finds himself lifted up out of the 
drudging and insensitive habits of business, his pro- 
spect widened, and his soul made keenly cognizant 
of spiritual truth. Then the honors of life dissolve 
before him ; his own ambitions seem dream-like ; the 
domineering cares that had bent his back, and wrung 
out his best services, are, to his thinking, like the 
summer dust which the whirling wheels roll up in 
the highways. Then, the truths of God, of the soul's 
truest good, of the connection of life and after-life ; 
of the nobleness of Justice, Truth, Purity, and Love ; 
of the reality of a Divine Providence, and the sense 
of God's presence, as of one who listens, and ob- 
serves, and influences the heart, — sink down from the 
recesses far up, where they had hidden, and invisible 
things, relations, conceptional truths become more 
real to him than things which have physical sub- 
stance and activity palpable to the senses. 

That tidings of death, or sudden losses, or the dis- 
closure of disease in oneself, should give such projec- 
tion to the mind, we can well understand. But how 
shall we account for such intense recognitions of 
spiritual truth and such wide prospects of things at 
other times hidden, or seen in detail, and discon- 
nectedly, and so, unimpressively, when there is no ex- 
citing cause — no shock that electrifies the nerves, 
and arouses the mind to a state of exaltation ? Thus 
one takes up some common sewer of news, and 
stepping over the avidity of the editorial columns — 
full of only flying dust — he carelessly scans the jum- 



CHRIST IN YOU, THE HOPE OF GLORY. 137 

ble of advertisements — dogs, clothes, medicines, 
estrays, runaway apprentices, losses and findings, 
meat and drink ; and besides these, the ten thousand 
signals of quackery in every profession, the bland 
hints of vice for decent vicious men, and all the 
boastings, the promises and lures — and while he di- 
vinely sees this phantasmagoria and is half Christ- 
ianly chiding himself for such a bitter contempt of 
life, and such a wish to be well rid of it, all at once, 
unbidden, without gradual transition, and with the 
clearness of a vision, there stands up before him a 
conception of the whole human family, just as they 
must appear to God, a vast complexity of interlaced 
and writhing, struggling worms ! And such an in- 
tense sense of sorrow, such a pity as almost suffocates 
the soul ! 

Then, quicker than a flash over all this abyssmal 
darkness, in which pride, and selfishness, and lust, 
and cruelty, shine and make dismal outcry, there 
rises up a sense of God's inexpressible patience, and 
a foreshadowing to the soul of some great con- 
summation of which we have as yet not even a hint ; 
and the heart rolls all its sadness and evils away, and 
clears itself of the horror of distresses, as the summer 
vault cleanses itself of storms, and changes all dark 
vapors into transparent ether. Just then the boat 
touches the slip, you have crossed the ferry; and 
these thoughts, like birds that had sung in the 
boughs of a tree, arise out of your mind with a clap 
of their wings, and are gone away. You, too, rush 
to the bow of the boat as if there were fire behind 
you, and join the throng that rattle gaily homeward. 



138 CHRIST IN YOU, THE HOPE OF GLORY. 

A few moments' walk clears you of the crowd, and 
remembering the flavor of your meditations, you j)ut 
yourself into mood for them once more. Now you 
try to fly up again. Not a whit of it ! You stretch out 
your thought to take the compass of life — in vain ! 
Tou reach up to find those calm regions of repose 
where the soul rests itself as in the garden of God — 
they are all hidden. You implore the majesty of 
Divine Presence to overshadow you again, but there 
is no voice to your spirit, and none that answereth. 
Why should such a vision have had its birth from the 
contents of a newspaper ? Why, when intermitted, 
cannot the will evoke them again ? Do they come 
without willing, and refuse to come at the will's 
bidding ? 

Can any one tell why one sometimes awakens in 
the morning, and finds his mind harnessed from the 
first moment, and ready to dart off in some special 
direction ? Why, sometimes, is there such a sense of 
the wickedness of oppression and injustice, such a 
conception of the facts of life — the strong consuming 
the weak, the skillful, the wise, the refined, only 
armed by their excellence with the means of injury 
to their fellows ; coupled with such a grief and indig- 
nation as shakes the very soul, and makes it re- 
sound, as old castles howl to the roar of intrusive 
tempests? 

At another time it is a distress of love. Were all 
that is in heaven or upon earth ours, it would not be 
enough to express the soul's desire of blessing all that 
can feel a blessing. We would ask no other joy than 
to put a brighter light in every eye, a sweeter 



CHRIST IN YOU, THE HOPE OF GLORY. 139 

hope and truer joy id every heart. That should be 
our everlasting reward at the hands of God, to dis- 
tribute his mercies to others. Suddenly, out of this 
sense of the beauty, and nobleness, and joy of bless- 
ing others, there arises the stateliest thought of God, 
and a conception of His bliss, with such a heart of 
love, and such a hand of power, and with such a 
field, and all marching in glorious procession on — on 
— and forever — that the soul has a certain faintness, 
from very joy. 

If these states arose from the presence of objects 
or events which naturally led to such reflections, or 
if they arose from any principle of reaction, or as the 
contrast and antithesis of any reverse actions, we 
should ascribe them to such influences. But often 
they defy both explanations. They come in season 
and out of season ; in high health, and in depression 
of vital power; in solitude, and in the roar of the 
city ; in moods that are sad, and in moods that are 
merry and mirthful. They are capricious as regards 
one's own will. 

Is it only a normal activity of the soul, in a higher 
range, for whose solution we simply lack familiar 
knowledge of ourselves ? Is it the potent suggestions 
of ministering spirits? Is it not rather God's own 
Spirit inflaming ours, and unsealing the soul to 
influences quite impossible to it, by any suggestions 
or volitions of its own ? It surely seems to us that 
the promises of Christ, that He will dwell within us, 
that He will give us a Comforter, an Enlightener, 
might reasonably be expected to produce other and 
higher fruits than those which spring from the force 



1 

140 CHRIST IN YOU, THE HOPE OF GLORY. 

of our own volition. And if such thoughts and such 
emotions, setting always toward God, toward Justice, 
toward Love, full of Hope, and Trust, and Heaven, 
are the things of God's Spirit, unsphering us from 
sensuous life, and giving us a prescience of life to 
come, then there is a glorious meaning in the pro- 
mises of Christ. Thus we understand how He mani- 
fests himself to his disciples as he doth not to the 
world. 



PRAYER -MEETINGS. 

An unknown friend in New Jersey has written us 
a sincere request for a form of prayer suitable for a 
prayer-meeting. We should be glad to oblige him, 
if we thought such a form would be of any use. But 
a form is not what he needs. A form may do for a 
congregation, where it is understood that prayer is to 
comprehend only the wants that are general and com- 
mon to all. But it seems to us that forms would 
destroy the very conception of a social meeting for 
prayer. 

What is a prayer meeting ? It is a place for social 
religious life. It is not for preaching. It is not for 
exhortation. It is the place where Christian men 
excite each other, and instruct and strengthen each 
other, by the free and familiar development of their 
religious emotions. Every Christian brings a brand, 
each places it upon the altar, and the fire is the joint 
flame of many hearts. What would be thought of 
an application for a form of conversation for a Christ- 
mas-night's party? A form of bargain for doing 
general business on 'Change ? For a form of impas- 
sioned utterance, for the use of loving hearts? A 
form of family greeting, to be used in vacations when 
the children come home ? But forms would be every 
whit as sensible in such circumstances as in a social 
gathering of Christians for religious conference. 

The very secret of conducting prayer-meetings, is 



I 

142 PRAYER-MEETINGS. 

to force people out of their conventional ways ; to 
break up their hereditary forms of unwritten prayer ; 
to inspire a genial and devout familiarity ; to keep off 
those impertinent moths called exhorters, that fly 
about the flame of rising feeling ; to charm men into 
a forgetfulness, if possible, that it is a meeting, and 
make them talk artlessly and sensibly. 

The very first step towards a wholesome meeting is 
truth. Truth is that which prayer-meetings, in num- 
berless instances, lack. Christians go to them, as- 
suming the sense of awful responsibility, or else try- 
ing to appear solemn ; or else trying to manifest a 
devout spirit. But in truth, a man should go to a 
meeting feeling just as he does feel ; and not pretend- 
ing to anything else, simply because he thinks he 
ought to feel something else. This pretentious mood, 
this artificial and clumsily hutched up feeling, over- 
lays the mind as straw and dead leaves do the soil, 
that nothing can shoot up. 

What if men should go to parties carrying, not 
each one his own nature and disposition, but, 
one striving to be brilliant, another to be witty, 
another to be instructive; who could endure the 
sham? We need to have men willing to stand 
simply and only on what they are and what they 
have. The speaking in prayer-meetings should 
be conversational, and so, natural. Usually, when 
a man has nothing to say, he gets up and exhorts 
sinners to repent. Another empty soul informs 
the church that they are very cold, and live far be- 
neath their privileges. When such men pray, they 
usually begin at Adam and go on to Kevelatmns ; 



PRAYER-MEETINGS. 143 

and then, sometimes, unable to stop, go back and 
strike in about midway, and back out both ways, 
through all manner of religious platitudes. 

How many prayer-meetings begin a long half hour 
after the time appointed ? First comes a hymn, then 
a chapter in the Bible, then the deacon prays, then a 
hymn ; and so on, a hymn and a deacon, until the 
list of officers is exhausted. The pastor laments that 
there are few men, besides those whose ordination 
obliges them to pray, that take part in meetings. 
But why are there no more ? "What has been done 
to increase the number of praying members ? Have 
they been encouraged to do what they could do ? 
Or is the spirit of the church such, that no man prays 
to edification, who does not pray smoothly and or- 
nately, or with a round, sonorous, guttural solemnity. 

Humble prayers, timid prayers, half-inaudible 
prayers, the utterances of uncultured lips, may cut a 
poor figure, as lecture-room literature. But are they 
to be scornfully disdained ? If a child may not talk 
at all till it can speak fluent English; will it ever 
learn to speak well? There should be a process of 
education going on continually, by which all the mem- 
bers of the church shall be able to contribute of their 
experiences and gifts ; and in such a course of deve- 
lopment, the first hesitating, stumbling, ungrammati- 
cal prayer of a confused Christian may be worth 
more to the church than the best prayer of the most 
eloquent pastor. The prayer may be but little ; but 
it is not a little thing that a church has one man 
more to pray than it had before. 

In order to this, pastors, or whoever conducts the 



144 PKAYKR-MEKTINGS. 

prayer-meeting statedly, should have a distinct con- 
ception of what a prayer-meeting is to do. It is a 
mutual instruction class ; a place for religious feeling 
to develop itself through the social element ; and the 
conductor of the meeting is to draw out the timid, 
check the obtrusive, encourage simple and true speak- 
ing, and apply religious truths to those wants, and 
struggles, and experiences which are freely mentioned 
there. 

A few hints, gathered from experience, will be, 
perhaps, of some benefit to those who are young, and 
beginning to assume the duties of pastor. 

There is no meeting for which one needs more pre- 
paration than a prayer-meeting.. But it is not a pre- 
paration of thoughts, ideas, and topics, so much as of 
the spirit and of the soul. One should save his 
strength ; come to the meeting with vigor and full- 
ness of feeling, and already eager when he first sits 
down. 

The way in which a meeting opens will often 
determine its whole character. If the brethren are 
scattered through a large room, bring them closer to- 
gether. Slow and long services at the beginning in- 
crease the sluggishness which too often is brought in. 
A short hymn, adapted to move the feelings, sung 
quickly — so quickly that every one has to arouse 
himself to keep up — will frequently give life to the 
whole scene. 

A church should be trained to courage. They 
should be thoroughly indoctrinated not to despise the 
gifts of the meanest member. 

When there is piety in a church, and the prayer- 



PRAYER-MEETINGS. 145 

meeting becomes the exponent of it, then it will be- 
come the most powerful and important meeting in 
the whole series of church meetings. A fair account, 
from grateful lips, of what God is doing in the hearts 
of a whole church, cannot but be better than the 
ideas of any one man, uttered from the pulpit, speak 
he ever so wisely. 

But if our friend still wants a form of prayer, for a 
prayer-meeting, we must refer him to numerous 
churches, where forms of pntyer have prevailed for 
uncounted years, although they are called extempo- 
raneous ; and, if he have some skill at stenography, he 
can soon supply himself with a book of forms of 
prayer. 



ONE CAUSE OF DULL MEETINGS. 

We hardly know of a more unprofitable exercise 
in social religious meetings than what is called ex- 
hortation. Doubtless there is a scriptural warrant 
for exhortation. But what is the nature of the ex- 
ercise ? It is the persuasion of a man to accept or 
obey some view of truth. The force of it depends 
upon the force given to the truth. It must needs 
relate principally to conduct. If one desires to pro- 
duce intellectual convictions, the way is not to ex- 
hort to them, but to present truths which of their 
own nature will convict. If one desires to enkindle 
feeling it is folly to exhort to it ; for feeling arises 
from the view of truth, and he who wishes to thrill 
the feelings must employ the truths which have a 
power to do it : or he must impart it by sympathy, 
being himself full of emotion ; or what is better, and 
the true method, he must present the right truth from 
a soul already glowing with the feeling which it is 
sought to enkindle. 

Therefore, when a brother arises in a prayer and 
conference meeting, unmoved himself, and exhorts 
men to repent, without presenting powerful motives 
through such views of its necessity as shall incline 
them to it, and without any exhibition of a deeply 
penitential feeling in himself, he throws away his 
efforts, and sometimes does harm rather than good. 
We have heard man after man in succession arise 

146 






ONE CAUSE OF DULL MEETINGS. 147 

and exhort Christian brethren with such a dead- 
ening effect that if there was a spark alive at 
first, it was quenched past all rekindling before 
the exhortation was done. During many a long, 
dry, sound, sober exhortation which has been in- 
flicted upon long-suffering meetings, we have seen 
men exhorted into sleep, and exhorted into helpless 
stupidity, into yawning, and weariness; and there 
would be but a single truth that seemed to touch a 
genuine chord of feeling during the whole meeting, 
and that was the truth that it was time to close the 
meeting. A dull, unmeaning, religious meeting is sim- 
ply an abomination. If a husband and wife should get 
together, once a week, and without a particle of feeling 
or earnestness, go through w T ith an hour of affection- 
ate etiquette, it would be regarded as a supreme ab- 
surdity. If business men should gather together 
once or twice a week in grave consideration of things 
which no one of them at the time cared anything 
about, and talk them over on this side and on that, each 
one forgetting at the door what he, and what his neigh- 
bor had said, men would say that they w^ere fools. 

Such things are seldom or never done in things in 
which men are alive. But for months and months 
together, men w r ill gather, without a ray of warmth, 
without any real earnestness, and talk in a drowsy 
and prosing manner about the most startling truths 
that were ever addressed to the human knowledge, 
in such a lifeless method that not a single thought 
moved responsive, and not a single emotion 
throbbed ! 

Let us imagine a man suffering the deepest afflic- 



148 ONE CAUSE OF DULL MEETINGS. 

tions and pressed by trouble beyond all ordinary 
power of endurance standing up among a score of 
friends in like afflictions, and saying in a gentle voice, 
whose tones were mellowed by the deepest emotions, 
" Dear friends, the hand of God is upon us. Let us 
not sink. Let patience have a perfect work. We 
must be tried. Whom the Lord loveth he chasten- 
eth. We are now in the fire, but God is with us. 
Let us be patient." Every heart would yield to such 
an exhortation. For conscious troubles would be 
the truth, and an exhortation to patience would have 
a vital relation to their living wants. A 

But what if, amidst great abundance, with homes, 
and friends, and affluence, in times of peace, and 
when life flowed with music, like a vocal brook be- 
tween banks of flowers and fringed shrubs, a reason- 
ably good man should commence a scriptural exhorta- 
tion about patience — its virtues, it necessities, our ob- 
ligations to exercise it, etc., who would be reached? 
Perhaps here and there a conscientious soul might re- 
proach itself because it did not feel ; but feeling, un- 
der such unnatural circumstances, is past all con- 
science-invocation. 

In like manner Christians are very composedly told 
that they are dead and good for nothing ; that they 
are not doing their duty. One man, with a familiar 
fluency evincing long practice will declare in the 
soberest and quietest way imaginable that he is a 
great sinner, and he is conscious of it, and that he 
feels that he ought to repent, and thinks that the 
brethren ought to join him in the impression. One 
man for the fortieth time during the year, exhorts 



ONE CAUSE OF DULL MEETINGS. 149 

brethren to awake because the night is far spent and 
the day is at hand. Another thinks that Christians 
ought to rejoice in God, and without a smile or one 
heart-swell, sets forth with frigid exactitude the duty 
of joy, and sits down to hear another brother say the 
same thing over again, in another set of words, if pos- 
sible more gloomy than those in which he had enun- 
ciated it. In this manner, too, we have heard men, pro- 
foundly engrossed in the world, rise up and exhort 
sinners to repent ; to repent before it was too late ; to 
repent now — it was their duty ; it was dangerous to 
put it off, etc., but not a sign of feeling had they. JSTo 
heart-heaving — no deep and disclosed sense of the 
hatefulness of sin, none of that softening and gush- 
ing which belong to penitence. It is worse than ab- 
surd, it is monstrous for men to mouth the most 
solemn facts, the most profoundly affecting truths of 
religion, as if they were rolling marbles, or discussing 
some trifle to while away an hour withal. The ear of a 
congregation often and often has been beaten hard as 
a macadamized road by the weekly tramp of exhorta- 
tion about truth, and to truth, and duty, and what not. 
Life is the characteristic of God. Life is the charac- 
teristic of Religion. Life is the characteristic of Truth. 
A dull assembly, with lifeless men talking about dead 
topics, is a scandal upon real religion. 

This matter grows even worse, if possible, when 
one listens to the dissuasives from courses to which 
the persons addressed have not the remotest liability. 
Thus a church dead beyond all budding or blossoming, 
is exhorted to beware of wildfire and fanaticism ; a 
slow-moulded methodical brotherhood, exact as a 



150 ONE CAUSE OF DULL MEETINGS. 

clock, are exhorted to discretion, to deliberation, and 
cautioned against impulses. A man of the most in- 
corrigible literalness, whose matter-of-fact soul never 
had a glimpse of any quality which was not measur- 
able by one of his senses, will descant upon the wiles 
of the imagination, and warn the young against fancy 
and fiction. A close-fisted man is in great dread of 
spendthrift benevolence, and thinks that Christians 
should always give upon principle and not on feeling. 
On the other hand we have heard a man of mercurial 
temperament greatly dreading lest he should be left 
to a heartless control of his judgment ! 

Thus men impose upon themselves ; and social 
religious meetings degenerate into absurd formalities. 
If any one thinks that liturgies and set forms of wor- 
ship are the only means of dullness and formality, 
they surely cannot have been much acquainted with 
prayer-meetings. They cannot have heard the same 
prayers substantially repeated by the same men, 
varying only in a growing glibness and dryness, for 
years and years; they cannot have heard the juice- 
less, tasetless exhortations about feelings, from persons 
without feeling to persons without feeling ; they can- 
not have seen the hour and a half of weekly confer- 
ence run the same dreary round, beginning and end- 
ing, with intermediate consistency, without a sign of 
life, but with an utterly lying semblance, a pretence 
of caring for what they did not care for ; of renounc- 
ing what all the world knew they did not renounce ; 
of asking what they did not desire, and desiring what 
they did not dare to ask. 



WORKING OUT OUR OWN SALVATION. 

There is a sense in which a man's salvation is not 
directly and absolutely a divine gift. It is not made 
over by God to man as a complete thing. A perfect 
title to a piece of property puts a man in possession 
of it just as absolutely on the % first day when it is 
given as in twenty years after. When a man gives a 
flower, it is a perfect gift. But the gift of grace is 
rather the gift of a flower-seed. It contains within it 
all the elements necessary for growth, which the 
sun is yet to warm and develop, until it comes tc 
blossom and fruit. "When men are called effectually 
by the power of God's Spirit, that is purely the office 
of God, and not of a human power. The calling is of 
God, and the forgiveness and amnesty are altogether 
of His free goodness. The efficacious influence of the 
Spirit upon the heart is God's work, and not man's. 

But when this has taken place, and men are 
awakened and brought into the number of God's 
children, the work is just begun. There is now to be 
a development of a Christ-like disposition. There is 
to be a life within, which is to consist in a develop- 
ment of every part of the mind, so that the whole 
soul shall be reeducated by spiritual influences. 
There is to be also a corresponding outward life — a 
course of Christ-like conduct. Every man is called, 
and graciously aided by God, that he may take care 

151 



152 W0KKING OUT OUR OWN SALVATION. 

both of the work which respects his own disposition, 
and the work which respects his outward conduct. 
And when the Apostle says, " Work out your own 
salvation with fear and trembling," it is not meant 
with servile or painful fear, but fear in the sense of 
solicitude; fear, in distinction from presumptuous 
confidence. 

But, it is added, " for it is God that worketh in 
you." Here is the inspiration of man's liberty, and 
the charter of his hope. Standing in the atmosphere 
of the divine heart, every one finds that his summer 
is come. The doctrine is not, that every man must 
wait till God moves him. It is a command to go for- 
ward, with a reason attached. It is an encourage- 
ment, not a dissuasion. It is wrong, by the twists of 
perverse reasoning, to change a divine truth right 
about, and put its back where God put its face. 

Many teachers have made an anchor out of this 
text, which God spread for a sail, and have, in effect, 
cautioned people not to move till God attracted 
them ; as if the chief danger of men was too great 
alertness in matters pertaining to religion. 

"When God calls men to awake, it is implied that 
the morning has come. When God says, Plant, it is 
implied that soil, air, and summer are prepared ; and 
he speaks to April, not to January ! 

And w r hen God says, Work, it is implied that there 
are all those conditions of providence and divine over- 
shadowing which make it worth a man's while to work. 

But many say, "How can I work if it be God 
that is to work within me ?" Well, if a father, going 
out into his garden where his child is at work among 



WORKING OUT OUR OWN SALVATION. 153 

the flower-beds, should say to him, " Now my son 
work with a will, I will help you and work with 
you," what would be thought if the child should 
suddenly look up and say, " But if you are going to 
work, how can I work ?" Is there anything incon- 
gruous or paradoxical in the idea that, though God 
worketh in us, we also are to work out our own sal- 
vation ? It is not said that God performs the work, 
but that he influences us to perform it. It is not, 
that God works for^ but %n, us ! 

The work of the Spirit is not to supersede, but to 
help our faculties. It is akin to parental training, 
to education, to the action and influence of one mind 
upon another. Not that God's mind acts upon ours, 
just as ours acts upon others ; for we have no war- 
rant for saying this. But the illustration is sufficient 
to show, that one mind may stimulate another to 
action without destroying its liberty. The young 
artist, while he sits under Raphael, or Michael Angelo, 
or Correggio, does not expect to have his work done 
by his master. He goes to witness and to catch 
his master's enthusiasm, that his own eye may be 
fired and his own hand guided. We bring up our 
children by the action of our minds upon theirs. 
Our influence over the child does not take away any- 
thing from the child's power, but on the contrary 
adds to it. And so, God says to us, " Work out 
your own salvation, for I am working in you." It is 
like a father saying to his children, " Here am I 
working among you, adding my experience, my wis- 
dom, and my power to yours ; therefore be hopeful 
and courageous, and enter with zeal upon your 



154 WORKING OUT OUR OWN SALVATION. 

work." It is an argument of hope and ardor, and 
not of waiting and faltering. It is an argument to 
begin now, and not to delay, witli the vain thought 
that God will finally do all the work and leave us 
nothing to do. 

If it be asked how shall we distinguish divine in- 
fluence from natural, the reply is, We cannot always 
do it. There is no intimation in the New Testa- 
ment that anybody can tell. If a husbandman 
wishes to know whether he is under the influence of 
right farming, he must go and look at his harvests. 
If, therefore, a man says, " How can I tell whether 
this feeling is of God or of Satan ?" he cannot tell 
by the feeling, but by its results. 

It is the same act that plants good or bad seed. 
It is the same string and bow, whether a scraping 
beginner or a Paganini play. The music evolved 
must determine whether a master or a bungler 
touches the violin. The human faculties, whether 
acted upon by sinister spirits, by divine influences, 
or by natural causes, always act within the lines and 
limits of their own laws and nature. And it is not 
any difference in sensation or consciousness which 
can distinguish divine influence from any other. 
We must abide by Christ's rule of estimate, "By 
their fruit shall ye know them." Is the fruit good, 
is there enough of it, is it continuous ? It is very 
certain that a disposition of deep benevolence, a 
heart of unfeigned love, will lead a man in the right 
direction, and he need not spend one anxious thought 
lest the devil should have inspired him with such 
influence. 



WORKING- OUT OUR OWN SALVATION. 155 

On the other hand, conceited and presumptuous 
men are found, who, assuming that they are under 
the divine influence and guidance, follow out their 
own selfish and fleshly lusts, and attribute it all to 
God. But no man can have any evidence that he is 
moved by the Spirit of God, except so far as the fruit 
is divine. There is nothing in mere consciousness, 
nothing in sensation, nothing in any witness or in- 
ward light, nothing in any degree or kind of exhila- 
ration, nothing in the pleasurableness or other quality 
of the feeling. The moral quality of the life deter- 
mines whether one is a child of God, or of the 
Devil. 

"What, then, is the use of the truth of God's Spirit, 
if you cannot discern its presence or action ? It is 
good for general hopefulness. It gives men courage 
to know that they are divinely helped, though they 
may not perceive the special acts. It is an exorcism 
to fear and superstition. For it exhibits the world, 
as illumined and overcome by the gracious presence 
of God working both in Providence and in grace, 
and throwing around all who will do well an atmos- 
phere of protection and genial incitement, in which 
they shall thrive and bring forth abundant fruit. 



TRUST Itf GOD. 

In a true Christian's devout aspirations, it is not 
from instruction or habit, but from spontaneous im- 
pulse that he exclaims " Our Father !" His thoughts 
go out after God. His heart yearns for him. His 
soul longs, with unutterable longings for his abiding 
presence. He comes with a truly filial spirit before 
God, and it is perfectly easy and natural for him to 
say " Our Father." And he has a right to say it. 
He is the child of God, and he knows it ; for " the 
Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirits that we 
are the children of God." Being the child of his 
Father, and away from his Father's house, he yearns 
for it, and at times is homesick — as children that are 
kept at school away from their parents long for the 
day of vacation, that they may go home ; and these 
yearnings are the testimony of the Spirit that we are 
the children of God. The man who has these feel- 
ings, and has them habitually, need not hesitate to 
call himself a child of God, or to address God as 
" Our Father." 

There are some Christians who always seem to 
have entire and unwavering faith in God as their 
Father. They trust in him to such a degree as to 
believe that whatever maybe the happenings of Pro- 
vidence, everything will be for the best, and that 
they will be taken care of, and never left alone. 

156 



TSUST IN GOD. 157 

They are confident in him, and seem never for a mo- 
ment to doubt. Their cup always runs over, because 
they always think it runs over. But, on the other hand, 
there are others who, while they are blessed abundantly, 
never see or think that they are blessed at all. And 
this class comprises the multitude of men. They call 
God " Our Father," only because the Lord's Prayer 
begins so, and not because their own prayer naturally 
and spontaneously confesses that -they are his child- 
ren, and that he is their Father. They have doubts 
and glooms. They have fightings without, and fears 
within. They allow small things to perplex them, 
and great things to overwhelm them. They distrust 
God — not intentionally, but really. They doubt his 
providence, though they would hardly believe that 
they doubt. They habitually look on the dark side 
of things, and excuse themselves for it by saying that 
they are constitutionally melancholy ; whereas, the 
fault is nothing more nor less than a practical want 
of faith. It is an unconscious skepticism of God. 
Men theoretically extol their faith, but practically 
deny it. They give way before every trouble, in- 
stead of conquering it ; and in every dark hour flee 
for refuge, not to God, but to themselves. 

Now all Christians, whether hopeful or despond- 
ent, are sometimes like the disciples on the Sea of 
Galilee — driven hither and thither by contrary winds. 
They toil all the night upon the deep, casting their 
nets, but taking nothing. Nay, oftentimes, their sea 
is without a Christ walking upon the water, and their 
ship without a Christ even asleep. Yet when they 
desire his coming upon the sea, and cry out to him, 



158 TRUST IN GOD. 

they soon see him walking to them over the waves. 
When they desire his awakening in the ship, they 
soon see him rising to rebuke the wind, saying, 
" Peace, be still," until there is a great calm. God 
hides his face only to disclose it again ; ( and his 
hidings are oftentimes as full of mercy as his mani- 
fested presence. But whether to their feeble-sighted 
eyes he is present or absent, they may always know 
that " He is not far from them at any time." When 
there are clouds so that they cannot see him, they 
may look at him through faith, and discern that he is 
not far off. And as they that go down upon the deep, 
and are overmastered by storms in the darkness of 
the night, knowing not on what strange shores they 
may be thrown, cast anchor and wait for day, so in 
the midst of trial and temptation, when the storm is 
fierce and the night is dark, when the lights are 
quenched and the signals gone, they may at least cast 
anchor ; and if they wait in faith and hope for the 
day, it will surely dawn. The darkness will always 
hide itself, and the light appear. There never was a 
night so long that the day did not overtake it. 
There never was a morning without its morning star. 
There never was a day without its sun. 

God can reveal himself to his own people as he 
does not to the world. He can give to every Christ- 
ian heart, to the timid as well as to the strong, to the 
sorrowing as well as to the hopeful, those divine inti- 
mations, those precious thoughts, those sweet-breathed 
feelings, which are evidence that there is summer m 
the soul. He can inspire the heart with that perfect 
love which casteth out fear. He can take away al] 



TKUST IN GOD. 159 

doubts and misgivings, all gloomy misapprehensions, 
all dreary forebodings of the future. He can make 
sunshine out of shadow, and day out of midnight. 
When our fears have been like growing thorns in our 
side, he can pluck away the thorns, and heal the 
wounds; and he can turn every spear which has 
pierced us into a rod and staff, which, instead of 
wounding shall support us ; so that the very things 
which once cast us down may be made to hold 
us up. He can so deal with us as to make every 
yoke easy, and every burden light ; so that the 
heavy-laden may come to him to be relieved of their 
loads. He can touch the fountains of our sorrow, 
and make our tears like gems and crystals, more 
precious than pearls or diamonds. Our tears are 
oftentimes among his most precious treasures. The 
things that we call treasures, he counts as of very little 
worth. The human soul is his treasury, out of which 
he coins unspeakable riches. Thoughts and feelings, 
desires and yearnings, faith and hope — these are the 
most precious things which God finds in us. 

He can do all things for us, whatsoever we need, 
and more than we need. "We are too slow to believe 
in his generosity. We do not often enough think 
that as he has infinite desires to help us, so also he 
has infinite powers. He is able to carry out all that 
he can ever wish for us. God is not like man. Our 
means are limited. With us, wishing to possess is 
far from possessing ; wishing to do is far from doing ; 
but with him, the wish and the power are one. His 
desires are fully equalled by his means. He is " able 
to do exceeding abundantly above all that we can 



160 TRUST IN GOD. 

ask or think. 55 Things that are great to us are small 
to him. The favors that we ask of him seem to ns to 
be large and royal ; yet to him they are very little 
things. The gifts he has power to bestow are not 
only greater than we ever ask, but ever can ask, or 
even think. 

He is always willing to give special grace for spe- 
cial emergency. If men are suddenly brought into 
trouble, He is " a very present help in time of need. 55 
"When rich men, by some unexpected reverse of for- 
tune, are made poor, he can sustain them under their 
burdens, when without him they would be utterly 
crushed. When friends are parted from friends, 
when families are broken and scattered by death, 
when the mother loses her child, and weeps because 
the cradle is no longer to be rocked, and the sweet 
laugh is hushed in the house, God can give " the oil 
of joy for mourning. 55 Whenever his children suffer 
disappointment, when clouds cast shadows over their 
path, when troubles brood heavily before them, when 
they are in trials of business or in greater trials of 
bereavement, he can take off the heavy weights. 
He can make the rough places smooth, and the 
crooked ways straight. When sorrow comes that 
seems to forbid all consolation, he can gently wipe 
away the tears, and bring back joy and hope once 
more. 

He is a physician who only waits to be called ; he 
is a friend who longs to be trusted ; he is a 
helper who only wants us to ask his aid. But he 
wants us to ask him heartily and truthfully. He 
wishes us to reach up our hand, and take covenant by 



TRUST IN GOD. 161 

his hand. He desires us to cast our care upon him, 
for he careth for us. He commands us to confide 
entirely in him. He wants us to have no hesitancy 
in our faith. 

And this is reasonable. It is what men ask every 
day of their own children. A father expects his 
child to confide in him. A child expects to trust 
freely in his father. And we ought to go to God, 
being his children, with less distrust and more confi- 
dence. We ought to take him at his word, and to 
have faith in his promises. If he has said, " I will 
never leave thee nor forsake thee," we ought boldly 
to say, " The Lord is my helper ; I will not fear what 
man shall do unto me." 

But when we borrow trouble, and look forward 
into the future to see what storms are coming, and 
distress ourselves before they come as to how we 
shall avert them if they ever do come, we lose our pro- 
per trustfulness in God. "When we torment ourselves 
with imaginary dangers, or trials, or reverses, we 
have already parted with that perfect love which 
casteth out fear. Mothers sometimes fret themselves, 
and are made miserable about the future career of 
their children — whether they will turn out drunkards 
or not, whether they will go to the gallows or not, 
whether they will be a disgrace to their parentage or 
not. Now all this is simply an evidence of a lack 
of faith. There are many persons in good health, 
with all their faculties in active exercise, who, having 
nothing else to worry about, rob themselves of sleep 
at night by thinking, " if they should suddenly be 
taken away, what would become of their families^ 



162 TRUST IN GOD. 

and who would take care of their children ?" Such 
distrust of God is dishonorable to Christian men ; 
and it is only because of his exceeding patience — 
which is the most wonderful attribute of the divine 
nature — that he does not signally rebuke and punish 
it whenever it is manifested. 

When persons are taken sick, they ought to bear 
it with a good grace; but nine out of ten, even 
among Christian men, repine and murmur. When 
they are visited with any trouble, their first thought 
is apt to be, "How grievously I am afflicted!" though 
the nobler thought would be, " How graciously I am 
sustained !" When a cross is laid upon them, they 
cry out, " What a burden I have to carry !" whereas 
they might better say, "What a burden Christ 
carries for me !" A Christian sailor, who lost one of 
his legs in the battle of Trafalgar, said that he could 
very often measure the faith of the people who con- 
versed with him by the way in which they alluded to 
his misfortune. Nine out of every ten would exclaim, 
" What a pity that you lost your leg !" and only one 
in ten, a What a blessing that the other was pre- 
served!" When God comes into the family and 
takes away one child, instead of complaining because 
he has taken one, it would be wiser to thank him 
that he has left the rest. Or he may crush a man's 
business, and strip him of all his worldly wealth, and 
yet leave untouched and uninvaded what is dearer 
than all — the cradle of his only child. Would it 
not be nobler for such a man to be thankful for what 
God left than to murmur for what he took away ? 
" The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away," but 



TRUST IX GOD. 163 

he always gives more than he takes away. If God 
robs a man of his riches, he leaves him his health, 
which is better than riches. If he takes health he 
leaves wealth. If he takes both, he leaves friends. 
And if he takes all these — house and home, and 
worldly goods — God's providence is not yet ex- 
hausted, and he can make blessings out of other 
things which remain. He never strips a man en- 
tirely bare. A man may be left a beggar upon the 
highway, and yet be able to give unceasing testi- 
mony to God's goodness and grace ! 

If men were to give thanks to God for what he 
permits them to have, rather than to utter com- 
plaints for what he wisely and graciously withholds, 
he might not unlikely give to them more abundantly, 
if for no other reason than to increase their gratitude. 

An old man, who is now without home or friends — 
a stranger in a strange land, who earns a scanty crust 
of bread, day by day, by selling steel-pens and writ- 
ing-paper from store to store, and from street to 
street, in New York, said the other day, that though 
he had several times been so reduced as to be for a 
period of forty-eight hours and longer without a 
morsel to eat, he never lost his trust in Providence, 
and always rebuked himself whenever he complained 
at his lot ! This man's faith was genuine ! He was 
a hero in rags, greater than many a hero in armor ! 

God's goodness is large and generous ; only our 
faith in it is small and mean. He carries the whole 
globe in his thoughtful providence, easier than a 
mother carries a babe in her arms. If we cannot see 
the end from the beginning, what matters it so long 



1G4 TRUST IN GOD. 

as he sees it ? What have we to do but to seek first 
the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and leave 
the rest in faith to him? 

We ought not to forget that an affectionate, con- 
fiding, tender faith, habitually exercised, would save 
us half the annoyances of life, for it would lift us 
up above the reach of them. If an eagle were to 
fly low along the ground, every man might aim a 
dart at it, but when it soars into the clouds, it is 
above every arrow's reach. And they that trust in 
God " shall mount up with wings as eagles ; they 
shall run and not be weary ; and they shall walk and 
not faint." Christ's invitation is: "Come unto me, 
all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I -frill 
give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn 
of me ; for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye 
shall find rest unto your soul. For my yoke is easy, 
and my burden is light." 



"WE SPEND OUR YEAES AS A TALE THAT IS TOLD." 

Who that goes into the garden to-day would ever 
dream that summer had been there? In midsum- 
mer, what covering of the earth, what abundance of 
leaves, what fragrance of blossoms, what tangled 
masses of pendulous vines ! All is growth, luxuri- 
ance, ever-sprouting varieties — the passing away of 
short-lived things covered by the fresh growth of 
new kinds ! 

A sound comes from the north ! It is the voice of 
Winter! In one night his nimble legions come, 
and the sickling frost cuts down summer to the 
ground. In a few weeks decay is over ; freezing 
succeeds frost, and summer is wiped away, with all 
its colors, it sights, its sounds ; and sad winds mourn 
over the play grounds of flowers ! 

When, in winter, we remember the summer, its 
glories seem like a dream ; it is no longer a fact, but 
a thing imagined. But, when high winds walk 
abroad in the winter, and drive all men from the 
fields, and the house is populous, the family is 
gathered, and the night, having grown long by rob- 
bing the day at both ends, morning and evening, of 
many hours, the household cheer themselves with 
industry and study. And at evening, all gather to 

166 



166 " WE SPEND OUR YEARS 

their various tasks — the father to his books, the 
mother to her children's treasures, the elder children 
to their school tasks, while the rosy child, with curled 
pate, climbs the nurse's knee — and she drones to him 
the long story, hundred-times told, and yet falling 
fresh as new upon the story-greedy ears of childhood ! 
He laughs, he w^eeps — he sighs, he shudders — he 
glows and expands, or shrinks and cowers, till the 
tale is done — then sitting for a while upon the stool 
by the mother's foot, the child grows abstracted, 
gazing into the pictured embers, seeing all manner 
of fantastic figures and changing forms upon the 
opening and shutting face of coals, and the plastic 
ashes, till the eye sinks and the head nods, and the 
drooping little sleeper is borne off safe to bed. 

In the morning, he wakes and hungers. The night 
is forgotten. A vague remembrance rests with him 
of the sweet excitement of the night. But the day 
clears off these fancies ; they grow more and more 
dim; they lie in the mind as films of spider-web 
float with long thread glistening in the summer- 
air. 

And thus, saith the Psalmist, we spend our days ! 
As a tale that is told! Years, with all their vast 
variety of incident, are remembered vaguely — they 
are thin and dreamy ! The present glows and even 
burns with intensity. But it is quenched when a 
few days are past ! Days come in with form, and 
sound, and motion like the coming in of crested waves. 
Like them, they break upon the shore of the present ; 
they cover it with a million evanescent gems ; they 
dissolve and flow out in undertow, and are lost again 



AS A TALE THAT IS TOLD." 167 

in the black depths — while new days, like new 
waves, foam, sparkle and break, as did they ! 

One by one come to us days and years. Coming, 
they have individuality ! But receding from us they 
lose all separateness, and the past is one indistinguish- 
able whole. 

Who can analyze and separate the years of his 
childhood ? From birth till one is four or five, the 
unripe brain receives few impressions that last. It 
is all blank. As in a printed book, at either end, are 
bound up many blank leaves, without print or writ- 
ing on them, so is human life, at either end, begun 
and ended with blank years, preserving no record — 
leaving no mark ! 

But, then come the youthful days — full of romp, 
of hunger, of growth, of childish exhilaration ! How 
do they seem to you now ? Are they separable ? 
Can you thread them, and paint them by memory ? 
Only one or two things peculiary significant remain. 
The days are huddled together. The very years are 
heaped in mass; and you think back upon twenty 
years as if they were but a hand-breadth ! 

It is as with a landscape to a traveller. Having 
journeyed all day, at evening reaching some high 
hill, he sits down to trace his path. The grass at his 
feet is plain enough, and the ants that run express up 
and down every stalk have brisk distinctness. The 
near bushes and the trees are so plain that the boughs, 
and separate leaves, stand out in their individual 
forms. But, as the view recedes, gradually he loses 
all these ; and a little farther oft', leaves lie upon 
leaves, grass is matted upon grass, and is no longer 



168 " WE SPEND OUR YEARS 

form, but only color. Yet farther, and trees begin 
to fade ; tree stands up upon tree, and at length 
whole forests are to the eye but faint clouds, with not 
one distinct line, and hills are rubbed out, and all the 
inequalities of the way, which the complaining foot 
felt in travelling, the eye no longer discerns, and only 
here and there a single peak or mountain remains 
clear and individual against the all-bounding sky ! 

Thus is it in life. Our nearer hours report them- 
selves ; a little farther, and days only, not hours, are 
discerned ; then days lapse, and weeks or months are 
like long aerial distances, in one line, whose continuity 
is measured by no prominent object. At length, years 
only can be seen, and not even these finally. For, 
as sailors leaving the harbor carry with them for a 
long time the sight of shore, but sailing still, lose first 
the low water-lines, but cling by the eye to the higher 
masses, which in time, in the ever sailing, fade and 
sink, leaving nothing but some height lifted far up 
like Teneriffe, which, after the night is passed, is all 
gone, hidden by the bend of the earth's surface ! — so, 
even high-topped years at length are shut down from 
our memory by the bend of the vast cycles of Time. 

How wonderfully true is it that we spend our lives 
as a tale that is told ! 

Come, go back with me. 

Who were the members of your father's family ? 
Besides your brothers and sisters, v who dwelt there? 
Who visited? Who came and went? Who were 
the neighbors ? These things were vivid realities to 
you when a child. What are they now? Mere 
marks. As a landscape artist plants in the foreground 



AS A TALE THAT IS TOLD." 169 

figures witli limbs and features clear, but in the far- 
off distance, when he would paint a figure, taking his 
brush and spots down a mere dash — a formless color- 
mark ; so to us are the living things, of the neighbor- 
hood. Some, to be sure, stand up and remain ! But 
a million are forgotten where one remains. 

Who went with you to the village school ? Call 
the roll ! Who were the successive teachers — Popes 
of the ferule ! 

Who were the girls? Who the boys? Then, 
when the uproarious school broke forth in tumult at 
dismissal, if I had asked you, you could have given 
every name. Now, call them up ! Who sat by you 
on the right ? who on the left ? Who were in the 
first class ? who in the second ? These were impor- 
tant things then. Who was whipped ? and who was 
never once struck? These, to you, were then more 
important than the roar of European revolution, the 
burning of Moscow, the battle of Waterloo; but 
what do you remember of them? Some memories 
are more tenacious than others. A few will repro- 
duce much ; more, some ; most, but little if any ! 

How much can you recall from the church ? Who 
went with you ? Who sat about you ? Who were 
the old men ? Who were in their prime ? And who, 
like yourself, were young ? And if these living and 
throbbing realities are faded out, it will be useless 
for me to ask you after the sermons. They were 
gone before they were finished. They fell upon your 
dissolving ear as flakes of snow upon water, and were 
gone in the very act of touching. 

How much do you recall from the green grave- 



170 " WE SPEND OUR YEAES 

yard ? What memories come thence, from that 
populous city without a magistrate, without a law, 
where all who quarrelled on earth, are now peaceable 
dust keeping excellent neighborhood ! 

And thus I might go on, tracing, step by step, 
your entrance upon life — your early endeavors — your 
first hopes of manhood. 

But, let us change the method, and try the truth 
of this description in another way. 

Call up the unwritten dreams and reveries of the 
past! They have filled years in all. You have 
woven fabrics of every pattern in the loom of fancy. 
You have reared up castles, peopled them with heroes ; 
you have lost and found treasures ; travelled and ex- 
plored, fought and conquered, loved and won, all in 
airy fantasies ; and thus worn out the watchful night, 
or wiled pain from consciousness in the weary sick- 
ness. Is that part of your life gone ? All gone ! 

Birds gathered for flight in autumn, rising high 
above snare or shot, and flying toward equatorial 
summer, often chance in their course to cast a feather, 
from the wing which carries them through the air — 
brilliant in color, and curved like a bow — which, 
wavering, and swaying, falls into some thicket, while 
they flock on. And when, the seasons changing, 
they are recalled, and fly now northward over the 
same ranges, they reach the spot where dropped the 
spent feather, can they see it, or find it any more ? It 
is lost and hidden forever! And so our youthful 
fancies, which carried us far above human life and 
reality, are fallen, and like the downiest feather from 
the wing, are lost and forgotten! If a tale that is 



AS A TALE THAT IS TOLD." 171 

told fades, how much rather those untold traceries of 
thought and subtilest evolutions of inarticulate fancy ! 

Where are the admirations which set the mind all 
a-sparkle % "Where is the record of the wonders, the 
surprises, the ten thousand excitements which broke 
the level of life, and brought interjections to the lips? 
That a dull routine should be forgotten, is not strange. 
But where are the salient experiences of life, the 
events which beat upon the attention like a drum, or 
roused up your passions like a trumpet ? 

Only a few of all the myriads remain ! As one 
who goes forth from a populous town, often looking 
back, sees it shrinking and growing smaller, houses 
fading, and the complexity of streets and buildings 
growing to a mere spot, and at length, only beholds 
here and there a long spire against the sky, or single 
tower, all the rest confused and hidden ; so, in the 
past, but one or two high-reaching experiences 
remain, while all the diverse and populous expe- 
riences besides are covered down and forgotten ! 

Your years of the past have been built of the same 
materials as go now to build your days. What rising 
and falling emotions, what flow of endless thought, 
what perpetual succession of events, which arrest the 
attention and occupy the feelings, what endeavors, 
what successes, what failures, each with its train of 
joy or pain, and each so important as to seem to leave 
indelible marks upon the memory! Yet, though 
there have been ten millions of these, and though 
they were of strength sufficient to hold you in their 
thrall, and excite you with pleasure, or agitate you 
with alarm, or afflict you with grief, sweeping the 



172 " WE SPEND OUR YEAKS 

soul as wind sweeps the sea, and raising as many 
tumultuous feelings as the sea hath waves ; yet, now 
the smooth memory has shed them all ! The trees 
will sooner remember all the successive leaves whose 
bosoms prepared the food for the growth of the wood, 
than you will recall the innumerable experiences of 
the past which have formed and fashioned you to the 
shape which you wear! The burdens which you 
could not carry for their weight are forgotten, the 
sorrows that pierced you to the heart have left 
scarcely their name ; the troubles that blocked your 
way, the dangers that shook your courage, and all 
those things which in their time wrung from you 
cries and prayers for relief, — you have not alone sur- 
mounted and out-lived, but mostly forgotten. 

Love, alone, stands with an undiminished memory ! 
What we have once really loved we never forget ! 
The friendship of youth, the warm and generous con- 
fidences of true affection, the tender worship of a true 
heart, are immutable ! All other feelings write their 
memories upon glass with crayons — Love writes upon 
crystal with a diamond. For, of all the heart's 
powers, this alone is sovereign. And, being sove- 
reign, God has crowned it with immortality, and 
given to Memory charge to keep unwasted all its 
experiences! And Memory, that is tenacious of 
nothing else, lets nothing slip of the experiences of 
true loving. 

Another year has passed ! Its months and its 
weeks already are buried. Only days and hours 
remain. These are passing. One more sunrise only 



173 

hath this year ! The next morning shall shine upon 
the face of a new year ! 

Let us turn, and bid farewell to the past and the 
passing ! Farewell to its cares, to its burdens, to its 
troubles ! Farewell to fears, and hopes, and griefs ! 
Farewell to its yearnings, its aspirations, its wrest- 
lings ! They are gone. 

Farewell to many who walked the year with us ! — 
to the companion, that was to us as an angel of God, 
and is, now, an angel with God! Farewell to the 
babe that was ours, and is God's, and therefore more 
than ever ours, though beyond the reach of our arms ! 
But, the heart tends it yet, and cradles it more vigi- 
lantly than ever! Farewell to our Christian bre- 
thren, who have heard the trumpet before us, and 
gone forward! Year! thy march is ending! Thy 
work is done! Pass! Disappear! "We shall see 
thee no more, until re-ascending, we shall behold thy 
record in the All-judging Day ! 



SUDDEN CONVERSION. 

It is a fact somewhat remarkable that most of the 
conversions narrated in the Bib,le were rapid and in 
some instances instantaneous. Paul, on his way to 
Damascus, was struck down, in a moment by the visi- 
ble presence of God. He saw a great light at mid-day, 
and heard a voice saying, " Saul, Saul, why persecu- 
test thou me ?" and he was so suddenly and overwhelm- 
ingly impressed by this manifestation that he could 
do nothing but yield to the power of God ; so that 
from being a persecutor of the Church, he was at 
that moment changed to be its chiefest apostle. Mat- 
thew, the publican, sitting at the receipt of custom, 
was met by Christ, who said to him, " Follow thou 
me," and it is said that " he arose and followed him." 

The conversion of the thief on the cross, during 
the very last moments of his life, at the eleventh hour 
of hope, was almost marvellously sudden, yet not on 
that account doubtful; for Christ confirmed it by 
saying, "This day shalt thou be with me in Para- 
dise." 

And there are similar instances at the present day. 
Sudden and unexpected conversions are not unknown 
to any Christian church. There is nothing whatever 
absurd in the idea, however some may affect to ridi- 
cule it. A conversion which takes no longer time to 
begin and end, than the sun to rise from day-break 

1T4 



SUDDEN C0NVEBSI0ST. 175 

to the mountain-top, may be just as undoubted as 
though it had been the work of a month or a year. 
The impression that a spiritual change, in order to be 
genuine, must be a long and gradual process, drag- 
ging itself through weary weeks and months, during 
which the mind is to pass through much anguish and 
tribulation, until finally the light shall arise and shine, 
is simply foolish. Time adds nothing to the thorough- 
ness of conversion, nor suffering to the evidence 
of it. In many cases much time is taken, and much 
suffering felt, but neither of these is to be considered 
as an absolutely necessary part of it. 

Tet there are many persons whose conversion is a 
long and severe struggle, during which they alternate 
week after week, and month after month, between 
hope and fear, who, were it not for perplexing their 
minds with a wrong notion of what they are to do and 
to be done with, might go up the mountain almost 
without going through the valley. Such instances 
have occurred among the most eminent Christians. 
It is known that John Bunyan went through awful 
terrors, as a consequence of a long-continued exer- 
cise of mind, before he found religious peace ; and 
his experiences are embalmed in some of the 
best writing in the English language. But it is our 
impression that the conversion of Bunyan might just 
as well have been a work of days as of months. 
John Wesley also went well-nigh three years before 
he found what he sought. This was a period of 
great effort, of continued urging up to duty, of watch- 
fulness and carefulness, involving almost unutterable 
trouble of mind. He finally went among the Mora- 



176 SUDDEN CONVERSION. 

vians and there reached those v iews which finally 
gave him quiet in Jesus Christ. 

There are not only single instances like these, but 
multitudes of others — of persons who have for years 
been bound, as it were, by some invisible cord, which 
has kept them in this bondage. The difficulty in 
many cases results from an erroneous apprehension 
of what is to be taken as evidence of conversion. 
Men make a common mistake between what is a reli- 
gious life, and certain expected fruits of a religious 
life, and confound the two things. 

Now, to be a Christian is to obey Christ, no matter 
how you feel ; but many persons think that after this 
obedience is rendered, there will be plunged into 
their souls what is called a Christian experience ; and 
that this experience, coming afterwards, is piety. 
They therefore attempt to conform to the love of 
Christ, and then wait for a projected, or interjected 
experience which is supposed to be a religious state. 
It is no doubt better to have the feeling that follows, 
than to be without it ; but the feeling itself is not to 
be taken for that of which it is simply the fruit, and 
if there is no feeling, it is not to be taken as evidence 
that there is no real religious life. 

"When a man sits down to a piano, reading his sheet 
of music before him, and touching the keys that cor- 
respond to the notes that he reads, it is certainly bet- 
ter to be able to hear the sounds that follow. But 
Beethoven — one of the saddest instances in history 
of human greatness and suffering — becoming deaf in 
the latter part of his life, used to sit down to the 
harpsichord, and play tunes of which he heard not a 



SUDDEN CONVERSION. 177 

single note. Even though his instrument fell into all 
manner of jangling discords, by becoming long out 
of tune, yet he still played upon it all those grand, 
swelling harmonies which were tumultuous in his 
soul. Now if Beethoven had waited till his ear could 
have become conscious of the playing, he would not 
have played at all. And it is the same with persons 
who try to live a religious life. There are two things 
which they must avoid confounding. They should 
mark the difference between following Christ, and 
the sensations which come in consequence of fol- 
lowing him. If a person trying to come into the 
discipleship of Christ, expects to do so by sitting 
down and waiting for a certain preconceived state of 
mind to come to him, as he might wait for a pair of 
wings to sprout out of his shoulders, he must not be 
surprised if he is disappointed. But many earnest- 
minded persons — who are near the kingdom of hea- 
ven, and desire to enter it — hinder themselves by- 
just such difficulties. They deny to their own minds 
the evidence of their own conversion, simply because 
they do not experience the feelings which other per- 
sons are known to have experienced. They are 
nearer than they think to their Father's house, yet 
not believing that they are near, they do not go in. 
Being so close to the gate that if they were closer 
they must certainly enter, they yet sit down and tarry 
without — mourning all the while that they cannot see 
their Father's face. Such a mistake is one of the 
saddest that can happen a man's life, and should be 
guarded against by more careful discrimination and 
better teaching. 

8* 



"TOTAL DEPKAVITY." 

Our attention Las been called to some remarks in 
The New York Examiner, a Baptist religious jour- 
nal, in wLich we are called to account for certain 
words said to Lave been uttered by us in a recent 
lecture in Boston, and also for giving the lecture at 
all in the " Fraternity Course." 

Although several other religious journals, as I am 
informed, have commented upon the same topics, I 
select The Examiner's editorial for reply, for two rea- 
sons : — first, because I have not seen the others ; and 
secondly and especially, because its tone is in the 
main kind. And we desire to say, that if all papers 
were as fair and frank as The Examiner, there would 
be more pleasure in the public interchange of views 
than is usually the case. And we beg the editors to 
understand the earnestness of our reply as applying 
more to the subject than to them. 

" Mr. Beecher is not to be held accountable for a newspaper report 
of his words — unless, having knowledge that certain words are publicly 
attributed to him, he acquiesces in the report. The Boston Journal 
quoted him as saying to the Fraternity, that 'every selfish A*an 
believes in total depravity,' and added, that the remark was loudly 
cheered. JSTow, every man who has discretion enough to speak in 
public at all, is bound to consider, not only whether a given sentiment 
is true, but whether it is true in the sense in which it will inevitably 
be understood by his audience. There are objections to the phrase 
' total depravity.' In the sense which would, perhaps, be most obvi- 
1T8 




179 

ous to ordinary minds; in that sense, certainly, which Unitarians 
have diligently labored to associate with the words, they convey a 
falsehood. There is no wrong in discountenancing their use, for the 
purpose of substituting a phraseology less liable to misrepresentation. 
But that is a distinction which not one in a hundred of those who 
applauded Mr. Beecher would ever think of making. If he did say 
what is attributed to him, he must have been understood as denying 
and vilifying that doctrine of human nature, without which there can 
be no logical or reasonable necessity for a supernatural redemption. 
If he has been falsely reported, we should be happy to know it." 

We admit in many cases that a man is to be con- 
sidered as accepting words attributed to him if, when 
widely published, and brought to his notice, he per- 
mits them to stand uncontradicted. But it is plain 
that this must not be formed into a rule, and that 
much must be left to the discretion of the persons 
concerned. 

If there are a thousand little things trumped up 
for the sake of provoking an answer; if men lie in 
wait, and watch how they may catch a speaker, strew- 
ing words and speeches along the way of controversy, 
as corn is strewn toward traps — is a man to run into 
the snare ? 

Life would be a perpetual flea-hunt, if one were 
obliged to run down all the innuendoes, the invera- 
cities, the insinuations, and the suspicions which the 
style of modern honor permits many religious papers 
to indulge in. 

But, even where there is no unkindness meant, and 
when no meanness employs religion as a cloak, and 
even where words or opinions are attributed to a man 
which have some importance, it is a serious question 
whether he is always obliged to contradict, and whe- 



180 "total depravity." 

ther he may not be allowed to employ his own dis- 
cretion in denying some without implying any 
responsibility for all which he does not choose to 
deny. 

Since we have been called before the public, we 
must be allowed to say, frankly, that it would be 
utterly impossible for us to look after all the errone- 
ous reports and the inaccurate statements which are 
continually made in our behalf. Hundreds of reports 
made for " substance of doctrine " by reporters not 
versed in religious literature, of sermons reported by 
letter-writers, and not a few more formal collections 
of sayings, and descriptions of things done or said, 
are sent abroad. ' Is a man obliged to put everything 
right in all these ? Is he to be held responsible for 
sentiments or expressions sent all over the land by 
letter-writers, unless he every week comes before the 
public with formal disclaimer and reiterated expla- 
nation ? If we did so, then, next, the very papers 
which require it would be the first to blame us for 
conceit in keeping before the public endless personal 
explanations ! 

But there is another side to this question. Have 
editors, religious and honorable men, a right to aid 
in the circulation of uncorrected statements, and 
hastily reported addresses, when they above all men 
know how seldom rapid speakers are correctly 
reported, and when, moreover, they have the means 
of inquiring at head-quarters as to the accuracy of 
any report ? How long would it take to cut out a 
paragraph, inclose it to the person represented as 
uttering it, and say, "Is this correct?" — "Do you 






"total depravity." 181 

hold yourself responsible for this?" If it is not 
worth this trouble, then it is not worth inserting in 
the paper. But again and again, the most serious 
misstatements have been put in leading religious 
newspapers, whose editors almost passed my door 
daily in going to their office. But, while they recon- 
ciled it to their honor to give injurious reports a very 
wide currency, they did not deem it their duty to 
take the least pains to ascertain the truth of the 
statements ! 

But we have become so used to seeing misstate- 
ments and misconceptions that we scarcely lift our 
eyebrows any more at the most astounding things. 
Indeed we kill them by silence ; having found that 
they thrive more vigorously by the notice of a denial. 
There was a story started some years ago that we 
began a sermon by the startling impropriety of the 
sentence, "It is damned hot." We took the pains 
to give this the most unequivocal contradiction, 
declaring it to be a lie out of the whole cloth, with- 
out the vestige or shadow of foundation of any kind 
whatsoever. But, since this denial, the story not only 
goes a good deal better than before, but more and 
more persons are, every month, reported to me as 
declaring on their personal veracity, that they were 
present and heard the speech. Of course, such per- 
sons do all, without exception, tell a willful false- 
hood ; but we dare not say so publicly, for fear that 
they will fall into spasms of affidavits, and convert 
their guilt into permanent form, past all repentance. 

Now we beg to have it understood, hereafter, that 
all reports which represent us as saying what we 



182 

ought not to have said, are undoubtedly erroneous ! 
Whereas if the thing reported is good, wise, safe, 
and eminently proper, let it be taken for granted 
that we said it ! With this general rule we shall be 
content. 

We now proceed to examine the allegation that we 
employed the term Total Depravity in a manner 
which produced upon the audience the effect of a 
fling at the doctrine of man's sinfulness before God. 

1. Even if the term Total Depravity were one 
deserving of respect, the use made of it by us, on the 
occcasion referred to, could be tortured into an 
offence only by the most unreasonable theological 
jealousy. And those who heard the lecture do not 
seem to have felt any impropriety. It was the report 
of it, published the next day in the newspapers, and 
read in the study or editorial office, that excited so 
much anxiety. 

We were illustrating the fact that a powerful feel- 
ing in action tended to produce the same feeling in 
other minds. We instanced the selfish man whose 
selfish feelings awakened like tendencies all around 
him, so that he roused up and surrounded himself 
with men's worst traits. Such a man is very apt to 
inveigh against his fellow-men. They seem to him 
exceedingly wicked. To the selfish man all men 
seem desperately and only selfish. And here it was 
that we said that a selfish man always believes in 
Total Depravity. Though he believes nothing else, 
he is always a firm believer in human wickedness. 

Now we really think that one must be extremely 
anxious to be offended to find occasion of offence in 



183 

this remark. And if the gentlemen who watch 
against the many-headed serpent of heresy had 
heard the context with the remark, they would have 
been saved from the assertion that it was cheered as 
a fling at the orthodox view of man's sinfulness. It 
was the whole hit at a selfish man's experience that 
drew applause — not any supposed subtile intimation 
of a doctrinal laxity on our part. 

2. But although we did not employ the phrase 
Total Depravity in any opprobrious sense, at the 
time mentioned, we do not hesitate to say now, that 
we regard it as one of the most unfortunate and mis- 
leading terms that ever afflicted theology. 

It answers no purpose of definition or of descrip- 
tion. It does not convey the sense in which \h^ great 
majority of churches hold the doctrine of man's sin- 
fulness. Instead of explaining anything, it needs 
explanation itseJ*. Every minister who employs the 
term usually begins his sermon by saying that he 
does not mean the very thing which the words do 
mean. For, Total signifies a degree beyond which 
there can be no more. A total loss is one which can- 
not be increased ; a total bankruptcy is one which 
could not be more complete; a total destruction 
is one which leaves nothing more to be destroyed. 
Men have a right to suppose that Total Depravity 
signifies a depravity beyond which there could be no 
more — nothing worse. This is the popular under- 
standing of the term. The people go with the lan- 
guage, and not with theologians. But this is not the 
theological meaning of the word. It is taught that 
universal man is depraved; and not that each man 



184 



is totally depraved. ~No man who uses the phrase 
believes men to be totally wicked — i. e., so wicked 
that they cannot be more wicked. If they can be 
more wicked, then they were not totally wicked 
before. And, just as The Examiner does, so 
do all sensible men. They do not use the term. 
They regard it as infelicitous. And yet, when any 
one handles it roughly they are full of anxiety for 
the truth ! 

This word is an interloper. It is not to be found 
in the Scriptures. "We do not believe that it is even 
to be found in the Catechisms and Confessions of 
Faith of Protestant or Catholic Christendom. 

We do not feel called upon to give the mischievous 
phrase any respect. We do not believe in it, nor in 
the thing which it obviously signifies. It is an un- 
scriptural, monstrous, and unredeemable lie. 

3. But, on the other hand, we do believe, with con- 
tinual sorrow of heart and daily overflowing evidence, 
in the deep sinfulness of universal man. And we 
believe in the exceeding sinfulness of sin. We do 
not believe that any man is born who is sinless, or 
who becomes perfectly sinless until death. We 
believe that there is not one faculty of the human 
soul that does not work evil, and so repeatedly, that, 
the whole human character is sinful before God. 
We believe man's sinfulness to be such that every 
man that ever lived needed God's forbearance and 
free forgiveness. We believe that no man lives who 
does not need to repent of sin, to turn from it; and 
we believe that turning from sin is a work so deep, 
and touches so closely the very springs of being, that 



185 

no man will ever change except by the help of God. 
And we believe that such help is the direct and per- 
sonal out-reaching of God's Spirit upon the human 
soul ; and when, by such divine help, men begin to 
live a spiritual life, we believe the change to have 
been so great that it is fitly called a beginning of life 
over again, a new creation, a new birth. 

If there is one thing that we believe above all 
others, upon proof from consciousness and proof from 
observation and experience, it is the sinfulness of 
man. Nor do we believe that any man ever doubted 
our belief who sat for two months under our preach- 
ing. Nothing strikes us as so peculiarly absurd as a 
charge or fear that we do not adequately believe in 
men's sinfulness. The steady bearing of our preach- 
ing on this subject is such as to plough up soil and 
subsoil, and to convict and to convince men of their 
need of Christ's redemption. 

But our belief of this sad truth is purely practical. 
We have no sympathy with those theologians who use 
Time as a grand alley, and roll back their speculations 
six thousand years, knocking down and setting up 
the race, in the various chances of this gigantic theo- 
logic game — what is the origin and nature of sin? 
Poor Adam! To have lost Paradise was enough. 
But to be a shadow endlessly pursued through all 
time by furious and fighting theologies — this is a 
punishment never threatened. Or, was the flaming 
sword of the angel a mere type and symbol of theo- 
logical zeal, standing between men and Paradise for 
evermore ! We take men as we find them. We do 
not go back to Adam or the fall to find materials for 



186 " TOTAL 

theories and philosophies. There is the human heart 
right before my eyes, every day throbbing, throb- 
bing, throbbing! Sin is not a speculation, but a 
reality. It is not an idea, a speculative truth, but an 
awful fact, that darkens life, and weighs down the 
human heart with continual mischiefs. Its nature 
will never be found in the Past. It must be sought 
in the Present. 



WOKKING WITH EERORISTS. 

We now print the entire first part of the article 
from the New York Examiner, the last part of which 
it was more convenient to dispose of first : 

THE * FRATERNITY ' AND MR. BEECHER. 

" In the congregation administered to by Theodore Parker, at the 
Music Hall in Boston, known as the c Twenty-eighth Congregational 
Society,' there is a literary association styled the 'Fraternity. 7 
Said Fraternity has got up a series of ' Fraternity Lectures, 1 an 
avowed object of which, if a newspaper announcement may be cre- 
dited, was to give to the l ideas ' of Mr. Parker a freer scope than 
the Lyceum platform allows. But whether that was the purpose or 
not, it is manifest that the effect would be, so far as any impression 
was made on the public, to give increased popularity to the man and 
his c church.' If the lectures prove, as has been claimed, ' the 
most successful course of the season,' they will reflect a certain lus- 
tre upon the ■ Twenty-eighth Congregational Society,' and upon the 
man whose infidelity is its pervading spirit. Such an effect, we should 
suppose, would be deprecated — at least, would not be even construc- 
tively aided — by a sincere friend of evangelical religion. But the pas- 
tor of the Plymouth church in Brooklyn has appeared upon Mr. Par- 
ker's platform, to lend to it his popularity. Mr. Beecher has asserted 
his right to do in all things what is right in his own eyes, and we are 
not disposed, even if we were able, to abridge his liberty. But it is 
utterly incomprehensible by us, how he reconciles with his love for 
the Gospel such open aid and comfort to its bitterest enemies. To 
appear with Mr. Parker, contemporaneously or successively, upon a 
platform which represents neither him nor his i ideas,' is one thing ; 
to assist in giving eclat to an infidel enterprise is a very different thing 
— and that is what every Fraternity lecturer, and every purchaser of 
a Fraternity ticket has done." 



188 WORKING WITH EKRORISTB. 

Of course we believe in newspapers, and in edi- 
tors. Yet, even an editor may be mistaken and a 
newspaper may fall into misstatements ! And the 
Examiner has in this instance been misled by a too 
confiding trust in religions or secular newspapers. 

It is true that the Fraternity Course was under the 
supervision of members of the Twenty-eighth Con- 
gregational Society of Boston, but it is not true that 
it was got up for the sake of giving Mr. Parker's 
" ' ideas ' a freer scope than the Lyceum platform 
allows " — if by ideas, the Examiner means Mr. Par- 
ker's characteristic religious views. On the contrary, 
it is known that Mr. Parker was preparing four his- 
torical discourses, on Washington, John Adams, Jef- 
ferson, and (we believe) Franklin. But such was the 
ill odor in Boston of Mr. Parker's religious notions 
that a studious care had been exercised to keep him 
from Boston lecture platforms, though history, art, or 
belles-lettres were his theme, lest the influence of any- 
thing that was good in him should " reflect a lustre " 
upon that part of him which religious men so much 
deprecate. 

But, on the other hand, the attempt to suppress $> 
man, and to silence his speech, on the great topics 
which are common to men of all religious views, 
must produce, not only among his personal friends, 
but among honorable men who utterly differ from 
him in religion, a determination that he shall have a 
chance to speak, at least ; and then, if people do not 
wish to hear an " infidel," on secular topics, of course 
they can stay at home. In other respects, this Lec- 
ture Course was like ordinary courses. It was not 



WORKING WITH EBRORISTS. 189 

lield in Mr. Parker's church, nor on his platform — 
though it would have been no worse if it had been — 
but in the Tremont Temple — a Baptist worshipping- 
place, where the Mercantile Library Association and 
other principal lecture courses are held. The only res- 
pect in which it was peculiar was, that Theodore Par- 
ker was to deliver four lectures in the course, upon 
Washington, John Adams, Jefferson, and Benjamin 
Franklin. Besides him, the other lecturers, six or 
eight in number, were those gentlemen whose names 
dignify and enrich the roD of all principal lecture- 
courses in the Union. 

The funds, over and above the expenses, if there 
should be any, were not designed to support either 
Mr. Parker or the Twenty-eighth Congregational 
society, of which he is the minister. They were to 
be employed in charitable purposes, and for the most 
part among the poor and unfriended ! 

And if the young men of the Twenty-eighth Con- 
gregational Society of Boston judged that we were 
one who would be glad to cooperate with Theodore 
Parker, in all honorable ways which did not imply 
approbation of his theology, for objects common to 
all good men ; and if they judged that we should be 
forward to aid all measures, among all sects, which 
have for their object the improvement of the young, 
and the relief of the suffering, they judged rightly. 
We believe in the right of free speech even of men 
whose opinions, when delivered, we do not believe ! 

Did the Examiner think that the young gentlemen 
of Mr. Parker's society got up a course of popular 
lectures for the sake of covertly propagating infidel- 



190 WORKING WITH ERROKISTS. 

ity, and invited me, without disclosing the inward 
scheme, to garnish the course, and to lend my influ- 
ence, blindfolded, to such an aim ? Or, did it never 
enter the head of the Examiner that a man might 
associate with men from whose theological tenets he 
utterly dissented, because he sympathized with the 
special benevolence which they would perform ? 
because he had an ethical sympathy with them in 
spite of their theology ? because he believed that a 
good man ought always to seek occasions of work- 
ing with men, rather than of working away from 
them ? 

We should be sorry to suppose ourselves singular 
in this matter. Are we to take the ground that 
no orthodox man shall encourage the young to self- 
improvement and to works of benevolence, unless 
they are sound in the faith ? Because Mr. Parker 
teaches a wrong theology to the young men of his 
charge, are we to hold off and refuse to help them 
when they endeavor to live a great deal better than 
we should suppose their theology would incline them 
to ? But this is the very case in hand. The young 
men in Mr. Parker's society undertook to do good by 
a course of general lectures; we lectured in that 
course ; good papers are full of grief ; and the 
Examiner regards it as " utterly incomprehensible." 
We must be still more incomprehensible then, when 
we say, that though we would earnestly desire men 
to believe aright in religion, yet, if they will not, 
then we hope that their life will be better than their 
creed. And, if we see men of a heretical turn of mind 
practising Gospel virtues and charities, we shall cer- 



WORKING WITH ERRORISTS. 191 

fcainly encourage and help them. For men do not 
derive the right to do good from the Thirty-nine 
Articles ; nor need they go to the Westminster Con- 
fession for liberty to recover the intemperate, set free 
the bound, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, educate 
the ignorant, and give sleigh-rides to the beggars' 
children that never before laughed and cuddled under 
a buffalo robe ! It seems to us a great deal better 
business for a Christian man to encourage his fellows 
in well-doing than to punish them for wrong thinking ! 

But the Examiner thinks that the success of this 
course of lectures will " reflect a certain lustre upon 
the Twenty-eighth Congregational Society, and upon 
the man whose infidelity is its pervading spirit." 
Well, what then ? Are we to punish an infidel for 
his infidelity by refusing him all credit for personal 
goodness, for active benevolence, for practical 
humanity ? 

If anybody does right he ought to be applauded. 
If Mr. Parker does well he deserves the credit for 
well-doing. If the young men of his charge do well, 
they deserve all the " lustre " of it. Or shall we take 
ground that no man who is not of sound orthodox 
faith is to have any " lustre " for practical virtue ? 
Must nobody be counted ethically right until he is 
theologically sound ? Such a doctrine would be 
monstrous! Every just and generous man in the 
community ought to rejoice in the good conduct of 
every man, without regard to his speculative views 
or theological affinities ! 

If a man institutes a temperance movement, must I 
refuse to help him because, being perhaps, a Universal- 



192 WORKING WITH ERRORISTS. 

ist minister, his zeal and fidelity in that cause would 
" reflect a lustre " upon him and his sect? If a man 
would establish and endow a hospital, must I refuse 
to co-work with him because, being a Unitarian, its 
success would reflect a certain lustre upon that faith ? 

When, in the pestilence in New Orleans, the Sis- 
ters of Charity did not count their lives dear to them, 
but night and day, fearless of death and defiant of 
fatigue, gave their utmost being to the care of the 
miserable sick, must I, a Protestant, refuse admiration 
or fellowship for fear a " certain lustre " would shine 
upon tho Roman Catholic Church ? 

If a Jew does nobly, he deserves the lustre which 
right-doing ought to confer; if an Atheist or an 
Infidel live virtuously and act honorably, he should 
have the " lustre " belonging to virtue and honor ! 

Does the Examiner think that we do not care for 
our own theologic views? We care a good deal. 
We shall yield them to no man's dictation. We shall 
not indorse any man's theology which differs from 
them. We have enough of the old disciple nature 
left to feel very desirous that folks who will cast out 
devils, should do it in our train, and as we do. But 
if they will not — why, then, we will help them to do 
ft in their way! No ways can be very bad that 
succeed in getting rid of the devil. But, if we 
were to help an Episcopal movement for general 
benevolence, would any man say that we indorsed 
high-church notions? If we were affectionately 
and urgently invited to Princeton, to examine 
the senior class in theology and give them some 
tender cautions on parting from Turretin and enter- 



WORKING WITH EKRORISTS. 193 

ing the life of realities, would anybody be so cruel as 
to say that we believed in high Calvinism, or were 
indifferent to all woes of conscience produced by 
that energetic system? Bishop Hughes will never 
invite us to speak in his new cathedral, and we not 
promptly accept it. But we affectionately appeal to 
the Examiner whether, on such an interesting occur- 
rence, he would think it his duty to pierce us with 
such remarks as are now puncturing our peace from 
his words ? 

If I had gone to Boston to buy carpets or books ; or 
if I had gone to Boston to help the Republican cause, 
if I had gone on any of those secular errands, in which 
all men of every shade of belief are wont to unite with- 
out criticism, no question would have been raised. In 
selfish and worldly interests men are allowed cooper- 
ation for common ends. But if I divest myself of all 
selfish or secular aims, and rise to a higher plane of 
benevolence, and seek to raise the fallen, to restore 
the lost, to purify the vicious, to elevate the ignorant, 
and to cheer the poor and neglected, Christian minis- 
ters and editors will not let me cooperate for such 
divine objects with every man who will sincerely 
work for them ; but I must pick for men of right 
philosophy, for men right in all theology ! Thus we 
allow selfishness to go with flowing robes and a loose 
girdle. We make her feet light, and her hands nim- 
ble. But upon religion we put iron shoes and steel 
gloves. We burden her with mail, and underneath 
it all we draw the girt of conscience to the last hole. 
Then she goes slowly forth, scarcely able to walk or 
to breathe ! 

9 



194 WORKING WITH ERRORISTS. 

I have long ago been convinced that it was better 
to love men, than to hate them ; and that one would 
be more likely to convince them of wrong belief by 
showing a cordial sympathy with their welfare, than 
by nipping and pinching them with logic. And 
although I do not disdain, but honor philosophy 
applied to religion, I think that, the world just now 
needs the Christian Heart more than anything else. 
And, even if the only and greatest interest were the 
propagation of right theology, I am confident that 
right speculative views will grow up faster and firmer 
in the summer of true Christian loving, than in the 
rigorous winter of solid, congealed orthodoxy, or in 
the blustering March of controversy 

Does anybody inquire why, if so thinking, we 
occasionally give such sharp articles upon the great 
religious newspapers, the Observer, the Intelligencer, 
and the like ? Oh pray do not think it for any ill- 
will ! It is all kindness ! We only do it to keep our 
voice in practice. We have made orthodoxy a study. 
And, by an attentive examination of the Presbyterian, 
the Observer, the Puritan Recorder, and such like 
unblemished confessors, we have learned that no man 
is himself truly sound who does not pitch into some- 
body for being unsound in the faith ; and that a real 
modern orthodox man, like a nervous watch-dog, must 
sit on the door-stone of his system, and bark inces- 
santly at everything that comes in sight along the 
highway. And when there is nothing to bark at, 
either he must growl and gnaw his reserved bones, 
or bark at the moon, to keep up the sonorousness of 
his voice. And so, for fear the sweetness of our temper 



WORKING WITH EKKORISTS. 195 

may lead men to think that we have no theological 
zeal, we lift lip an objurgation now and then — as 
much as to say, "Here we are, fierce and orthodox: 
ready to growl when we cannot bite !" 

But the Examiner says : " The pastor of the Ply- 
mouth church in Brooklyn has appeared upon Mr. 
Parker's platform, to lend it his popularity." I 
neither borrowed nor lent. I went before an audience 
in the Tremont Temple, a Baptist meeting-house, the 
place for the chief part of public lectures, to give my 
own ideas, and to exert whatever power I had by my 
thoughts and by my feelings upon such audience as 
pleased to come together. If they were good men 
they needed me less: if they were bad, they needed 
me more. But either way, I was responsible for 
my own testimony, and for nothing more ; and 
this was not lent to Mr. Parker, but to the 
audience. Yet, whenever Theodore Parker does 
what is right and noble, if it were possible for me 
to lend him anything I would do it gladly. I have 
nothing to lend, however, but good will, and that I 
never lend, but give, free as God's air ! 

But, it will be asked, will the public understand 
your position, and, however you may design it, will 
not the impression go abroad either that you sympa- 
thize with infidel views, or are indifferent to them ? 
No. The public especially will not misunderstand. 
There is formed and forming a moral judgment in 
the intelligent part of the community, that popular 
Christianity needs more love in it. Men at large will 
be a great deal more apt to say that I have done a 
more exemplary Christian act, in daring to avow an 



196 WORKING WITH ERRORISTS. 

ethical sympathy with Theodore Parker, between 
whom and myself there exists an irreconcilable the- 
ological difference, than if I had bombarded him 
for a whole year, and refused to touch his hand ! 

What a pitiful thing it is to see men, who have the 
chance of saying what they believe, who do say it 
two hundred times a year, who write it, sing it, speak 
it, and fight it*; who, by all their social affinities, by 
all their life-work, by all positive and most solemn 
testimonies, are placed beyond misconception, — 
always nervous lest they should sit down with some- 
body, or speak with somebody, or touch somebody, 
and so lose an immaculate reputation for soundness ! 
Therefore, men peep out from their systems as pri- 
soners in jail peep out of iron-barred windows, but 
dare not come out, for fear some sharp sheriff of the 
Faith should arrest them ! 

If we held Theodore Parker's views, we should not 
wait to have it inferred. Men would hear it from 
our lips, and hear it past all mistaking. And we 
are not going at our time of life to begin to watch 
over our " influence /" to cut and trim our sentences 
lest some mousing critic should pounce upon an infe- 
licity and draw upon us a suspicion. "We have never 
sought influence, and we never shall seek it. Any 
that we have now, came to us because we went 
straight forward, doing whatever was right, and 
always believing that a loving heart was a better 
judge of what was right than a cold and accurate 
head. Neither is infallible. Both make mistakes. 
But the errors of the heart dissolve in the kindness 
of men's natures as snowflakes dissolve in warm- 



WORKING WITH ERRORISTS. 197 

bosomed lakes, while the errors of cold intellect 
pierce and stick like arrows. If I cannot make my 
people understand my belief, in fifty-two Sabbaths 
of the year, I shall not mend the matter by refusing 
to follow the generous sympathies of my heart. 

No. The common people will not misunderstand. 
Nor will practical Christian ministers. They may 
differ from my judgment, but they will understand 
my deed. It is only those professed defenders of the 
faith, who, having erected suspicion into a Christian 
grace, practise slander as a Christian duty, that will 
be liable to mistake. And it makes no difference 
whether such men understand or not. These men 
are like aspen-trees growing on rocks. In conceit 
and arrogance they are hard as granite, while they 
tremble all over like aspen leaves with perpetual 
fears and apprehensions of dismal mischief to come ! 

When Theodore Parker appears in his representa- 
tive character as a theologian, I am as irreconcilably 
opposed to him as it is possible to be. The things 
that are dear to him, are cheerless and unspeakably 
solitary and mournful to me. The things which are 
the very centre of my life, the inspiration of my exis- 
tence, the glory of my thought and the strength of 
my ministry, are to him but very little. I differ 
from him in fact, in theory, in statement, in doctrine, 
in system, in hope and expectation ; living or dying, 
laboring or resting — in theology, we are separate, and 
irreconcilable. 

Could Theodore Parker worship my God ? — Christ 
Jesus is his name. All that there is of God to me is 
bound up in that name. A dim and shadowy efflu- 



198 WORDING WITH ERROBISTS. 

ence rises from Christ, and that I am taught to call 
the Father. A yet more tenuous and invisible 
film of thought arises, and that is the Holy Spirit. 
But neither are to me aught tangible, restful, acces- 
sible. 

They are to be revealed to my knowledge here- 
after, but now only to my faith. But Christ stands 
my manifest God. All that I know is of him, and 
in him. I put my soul into his arms, as, when I was 
born, my father put me into my mother's arms. I 
draw all my life from him. I bear him in my 
thoughts hourly, as I humbly believe that he also 
bears me. For I do truly believe that we love each 
other! — I, a speck, a particle, a nothing, only a mere 
beginning of something that is gloriously yet to be, 
when the warmth of God's bosom shall have been a 
summer for my growth ; — and He, the Wonderful 
Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, 
the Prince of Peace ! 

And this Redeemer of the world, this Saviour of 
sinners, I accept, not only as my guide, my friend, 
my deliverer, but as an atoning God, who bore my 
sins upon the cross, and delivered me from their 
penalty. And, since my life is spared to me by him, 
I give to him that life again. This hope of Christ is 
the staff of my ministry. First, highest, and in mea- 
sure beyond all other things, I preach Jesus Christ. 
And all other topics are but arrows, shot out of this 
Divine bow. And this has been so for twenty years, 
eleven of which I have labored in Brooklyn. And 
yet the Examiner is pleased to reproach me, as if, 
against the sweep of my life, and the current and tes- 



WORKING WITH ERRORISTS. 199 

timony of my being, I had gone to Boston to give 
" eclat to an infidel enterprise," and only because I 
gladly helped men who do not agree with me in 
theology to do deeds of mercy in which all good 
men should be united ! 

What must be the condition of the public mind, 
on the subject of Christian charity, when the simple 
cooperation of a man, on a ground of common bene- 
volence, is made to signify more than his wdiole regu- 
lar life-work ? 

The disposition to find some common ground of 
kindness and benevolent work, with those from 
whom we are known to differ, will be a real preach- 
ing of the Gospel to tens of thousands who are 
unmoved by dogmas or doctrines. It is Love that 
the world wants. When Love goes abroad in the 
full worth of its nature, and endures, and suffers, 
without reward except the sweetness of suffering 
borne for another, then men begin to see what is the 
heart and spirit of Christ, and to have some motions 
towards faith in him ! 

If tears could wash away from Mr. Parker's eye? 
the hindrances, that he might behold Christ as 1 
behold and adore him, I would shed them without 
reserve. If prayers could bring to him this vision of 
glory, beyond sight of philosophy, I would for him 
besiege the audience-chamber of heaven with an end- 
less procession of prayers, until another voice sound- 
ing forth from another light brighter than the noon 
day sun, should cast down another blinded man, tc 
be lifted up an apostle with inspired vision ! 

But since I may not hope so to prevail, I at least 



200 WORKING WITH ERRORISTS. 

will carry him in my heart, I will cordially work with 
him when I can, and be heartily sorry whenever I 
cannot. 

"While we yet write, word comes that Mr. Parker, 
broken down by overlabor, seeks rest and restoration 
in a warmer clime. Should these lines reach his eye, 
let him know that one heart at least remembers his 
fidelity to man, in great public exigencies when so 
many swerved, of whom we had a right to expect 
better things. God shield him from the ocean, the 
storm, the pestilence ; and heal him of lurking dis- 
ease. And there shall be one Christian who will 
daily speak his name to the heart of God in earnest 
prayer, that with health of body he may also receive 
upon his soul the greatest gift of God, — faith in 
Jesus Christ as the Divine Saviour of the world. 






MISCHIEVOUS SELF-EXAMHSTATIOK 

The term, self-examination, is applied, not to the 
consideration of one's outward conduct, but to a re- 
view and analysis of one's hidden feelings ; to the 
motives, and to the moral complexion of one's emo- 
tions. In this matter, as in many others, those who 
most need it seldom practise it, and those practise it 
most who could best do without it. Thus if a man 
have a strong practical cast, a natural sagacity in 
matters of form and substance, a ready, knowledge of 
men and things, he will tend to cultivate that out- 
ward direction of his mind ; and to regard introspec- 
tion as unpractical. This opinion is confirmed by the 
few paroxysmal attempts at the study of himself. 
Made upon impulse, without skill, or practice, upon 
too large a scale, with the heat of new zeal, the result 
is confusion and disgust. He reverts to his practical 
life, and always speaks of himself as not adapted to 
metaphysical meditation. Yet, this man especially 
needs to study himself, because he is by his nature so 
strongly drawn away toward outward and material life. 

On the other hand, a reflective, sensitive mind, 
dwells upon its own states too much, and lives so 
much in introspection, as to have but a slender sym- 
pathy with the outward world. 

A special form of this last mentioned danger is fre- 
quently found in young and conscientious Christians. 

9* 201 



202 MISCHIEVOUS SELF-EXAMINATION. 

They attempt to maintain a habitual watch over their 
minds. They check every budding feeling till they 
know what fruit it will bear. They stop every swell- 
ing emotion till they have " examined " it. They 
treat the religious feelings, as an officer would a per- 
son suspected of having stolen goods about his person 
— stripping off its cloak, and scrutinizing sharply. 
The mind, thus badgered, is like a steed whom you 
whip with one hand and hold in with the other ; it 
becomes restless and chafed. The poor victim does 
not know " how he does feel." He wishes he knew 
his own motives. He will be heard inquiring much 
after his " evidences." "How can a man tell whether 
he has faith or not ?" " How may I know whether 
I really love God ?" " How do I know whether all 
my motives in seeking religion are not selfish ?" Such 
questions will identify the victims of narrow selfi- 
examination. 

The moment a feeling becomes an object of atten- 
tion, it ceases to be a feeling. Emotions change to 
ideas. The real process of what is called, by many, 
self-examination, is but the transmutation of an emo- 
tive state into an intellectual state; for feeling 
perishes where analysis begins. They burn the flower 
that they may analyze its ashes, and then are discon- 
tented that, raking in the ashes, they find neither 
root, stem, nor flower. 

This course is every w T ay unnatural, and inflicts 
upon the mind a long train of mischiefs. There can 
be no such thing as a current in the mind, a free 
sweep, a generous momentum, where every state of 
feeling is stopped for examination. The mind becomes 



MISCHIEVOUS SELF-EXAMINATION. 203 

restless. It begins nervously to break out in one direc- 
tion or another, seeking by violent reactions that natural 
liberty which has been denied it. If the causes con- 
tinue, the results will vary according to the peculiar 
temperament and structure of the mind. Some will 
retract in disgust from all attempts at religion, except 
as a scheme of morals. Others will grow despondent, 
and all their lifetime be subject to bondage. Others 
still, will come to a degree of morbid sensitiveness, 
which will only stop short of superstition. They will 
have a thousand questions starting up ; they will feel 
pangs of remorse upon the slightest occasion ; they 
will be thrown off their guard by a text suddenly 
presented, by the remarks of clergymen or of Christian 
friends, and brood in perpetual disquiet over a chaotic 
and gloomy experience. 

In such states, every effort of the sufferer being a 
stimulus upon a jaded or morbid condition, will 
aggravate the suffering and put relief yet further off. 

Such mischiefs are not imaginary. Every year we 
meet them in repeated instances. Some five within 
a week, have come to our notice. 



WHEEE CHRISTIANS MEET. 

A prayer-meeting is a place for social religious 
life. It is not for preaching, nor is it for exhortation. 
It is a place where Christians meet to instruct and 
strengthen one another by a free and familiar develop- 
ment of their religious experiences and emotions. 
It is an altar — for whose fire every Christian brings 
a brand, and where the whole pile is made up of the 
added fagots of many enkindled hearts. 

This is the primary idea of a prayer-meeting. It 
is evident, therefore, that the first step toward a 
wholesome meeting is truthfulness. Yet it is this 
important element which is apt to be most often lack- 
ing. It is thought necessary, even by advanced 
Christians, to assume a sense of awful responsibility, 
to put on an air of profound solemnity, and to mani- 
fest an eminently devout spirit. But these feelings 
are never proper, except when they are real. They 
should never be assumed. They should never be put 
on and worn as a kind of appropriate dress, becoming 
to the occasion. Men should not lay aside their 
naturalness before God, any more than before men — 
and even less, as God can see through the guise when 
men may not. They should not pretend to be what 
they are not, any more in a prayer-meeting with their 
brethren, than alone in their own private closet. 
Any pretentious mood, or any forced and artificial 

204 



WHERE CHRISTIANS MEET. 205 

feeling, will always do harm, for it will overlay the 
mind as straw and dry leaves overlay the soil, so 
that nothing is able to spring up. 

No man should utter a word in a prayer-meeting 
which is not spoken in sincerity. It is a greac and 
grievous sin for a man to utter prayers to God, when 
his heart neither suggests, nor enters into, the peti- 
tions. It is a piece of mockery that no man would 
endure, much less God. For any creature to bow 
before his Creator, and say prayers, whether they be 
long or short, printed or unprinted, which do not 
engage his heart, but which he utters from a mere 
sense of duty, or from superstitious fear, or from 
habit, is an inexpressible audacity. Yet it is often 
done. And it is said, " If you do not feel like pray- 
ing, pray till you do." Now there certainly are 
degrees of interest ; and a man may be blameless for 
experiencing less fervor at the beginning of a devo- 
tional period than at the end of it. But for a man to 
employ prayer as a mere exercise, or as a mere mode 
of giving himself a stirring up — to stand before God 
and assume the tones, the language, the manner of feel- 
ing, for the sake of coming by and by into the feeling, 
is a desecration of prayer almost blasphemous. 

If it be asked, " "What then shall a man do ? Shall 
he neglect prayer until he does feel ? Shall he refuse 
to take part in a prayer-meeting until the glow is 
upon him ?" — the answer is that such a man should 
not neglect prayer, neither in his closet, nor perhaps 
in the prayer-meeting. But he must prepare himself 
for prayer. He must watch and study for the dispo- 
sition. He should refresh his mind with Scriptural 



206 WHERE CHRISTIANS MEET. 

truths, and should consider his own wants and sinful- 
ness. This he should do apart from noise and excite- 
ment, if possible ; and he may be aided in doing it 
by employing hymns and psalms, which will often- 
times speedily carry his mind out of a dull and dead 
frame into some beginnings of life. He may thus 
come into a state in which prayer will not be a stupid 
act, or a dead form, but the glowing expression of a 
living feeling. 

This is a proper preparation for prayer, whether 
public or private. If prayers in a prayer-meeting 
cannot be genuine, they might better be omitted, 
and hymns sung in their place. If but a single, sen- 
tence is uttered, let it be real ; and let utterance 
cease when the heart no longer prompts — and the 
heart will often have ceased its promptings long 
before a recitation of fifteen minutes is concluded. 
One moment of real communion with God is prayer, 
but a whole hour of recited words, without feeling, 
is not prayer, and is worse than none. 

The way to kill a prayer-meeting is to make it con- 
ventional, and the chief secret of conducting it so that 
it shall minister to edification, is to force people out 
of conventional ways ; to break up hereditary and 
stereotyped unwritten forms of prayer ; to keep off 
those impertinent moths called exhorters, that fly 
about the flame of rising feeling ; to charm men into 
forgetfulness of the machinery of the meeting ; and 
to make them talk artlessly, naturally, and sensibly. 

But above all, let all pretence, all mock solemnity 
and devotion, be put away. Let no man suffer him- 
self to appear to his brethren to be what he is not , 



WHERE CHRISTIANS MEET. 207 

for this is part of the injunction, "Let every man 
speak truth with his neighbor." If this rule be not 
observed, and the frequent tendencies to violate it be 
not corrected, the prayer-meetings will degenerate, 
and people will lose first all profit and then all inte- 
rest in them. For, what if people should go to an 
evening party, not in their natural character, but, one 
striving to be brilliant, another to be witty, another 
to be instructive, another to be profound? Who 
could endure the sham? There is need in prayer- 
meetings of men who are willing to stand simply and 
only on what they are and what they have. 

The speaking in prayer-meetings should be conver- 
sational, and so, natural. The w r ords spoken should 
flow naturally from the heart's experience, or else it 
were better to be silent. Usually, however, when a 
man has nothing to say, he gets up and exhorts 
sinners to repent ; or, another, whose heart is empty, 
informs the church that they are very cold, and live 
far beneath their privileges. Such prayers or exhor- 
tations may be very glib and fluent, but they are as 
dry of sap or juice as last year's corn-husks. They 
are not only profitless but damaging. On the con- 
trary, there are oftentimes prayers, humble, timid, 
half-inaudible, the utterances of uncultivated lips, 
that may cut a poor figure as lecture-room literature, 
that are nevertheless not to be scornfully disdained. 
If a child may not talk at all till he can speak fluent 
English, he will never learn. There should be a 
process, going on, continually, of education, by which 
all the members of the church should be able to con- 
tribute of their experiences and gifts ; and, in such a 



208 WHERE CHRISTIANS MEET. 

course of development, the first hesitating, stumbling, 
ungrammatical prayer of a confused Christian may 
be worth more to the church than the best prayer of 
the most eloquent pastor. The prayer may be but 
little ; but it is not a little thing that a church has 
one more man who is beginning to pray than it had 
before. 

The conductor of a prayer-meeting should have a 
distinct conception of what such a meeting is to be 
and to do ; and as it is a mutual instruction class, a 
place for religious feeling to take the social element, 
his chief duty should be to draw out the timid, to 
check the obtrusive, to encourage simple and true 
speaking, and to apply religious truths to those 
wants, and struggles, and experiences which are 
freely mentioned there. 



THE DAY AND THE DESK. 

It is no small thing, as it regards the education of 
the community, that from their youth up they have 
been taught to discuss all questions from ascertained 
and authoritative moral grounds. The rhetoric or 
argument of ancient civilization was secular, both in 
its spirit and aims. The intellect and the imagina- 
tion were trained, not the conscience or the affec- 
tions. 

To have the whole, or the greatest part, of the 
community gather together every week for the reli- 
gious discussion of life questions, cannot fail to estab- 
lish a public mind which no other known causes 
could produce. The family educates the affections. 
Secular affairs train and sharpen the business facul- 
ties. Public affairs give general information; but 
where is moral training to come from ? 

The moral element in man has but a sorry chance 
against his selfish faculties and his passions. A few, 
in every community, are so endowed as to stand up, 
men of integrity and of natural religion, without or 
even against training. They may not be Christians. 
But they are men of a strong religious nature, and of 
slender passions, to whom justice and an imperfect 
spirituality is congenial. Such cases are single and 
isolated. The mass of men are not just nor religious, 
unless in a fragmentary way in exceptional instances 

209 



210 THE DAY AND THE DESK. 

Take men as they rise, and their selfish and animal 
instincts are more active, more influential than their 
religious feelings. The habits of life are founded upon 
current selfishness. The character is shaped by the 
influence of three or four feelings, — the love of pro- 
perty, of power, and influence, of praise, and by the 
love of animal indulgence. 

Benevolence, as an overruling power; justice 
between man and man, as a controlling force; a 
love of God and a salutary reverence for him, as an 
atmosphere in which the soul breathes, these are not 
common. From the beginning of life, the conscience 
is apt to be uneducated, or overlaid by selfishness, or 
drugged and silenced. Men are good-natured, or 
generous, upon occasions. A few are benevolent. 

In the most select and best communities not one in 
a thousand is benevolent. Not one in a hundred is 
generous. When their own interests or wishes are not 
to be sacrificed ; when kindness runs parallel with self- 
ishness ; when good service costs nothing, and is even 
easier than its opposite, then, one must be either a 
dyspeptic, or a very bad man, if he be not kind and 
generous. But in such cases the good feeling is a 
very narrow valley between very high mountains on 
either side. Of all the men that are regarded as 
respectable in New York, how many act from such 
deliberate convictions of conscience, that it may be 
said of them they are governed by a sense of Eight? 
How many are benevolent — not in the sense of being 
good-natured when they are pleased, or kind when 
everything is to their mind, or generous when it costs 
them nothing and is easier than selfishness — but 



THE DAY AND THE DESK. 211 

when to be so requires self-denial and moral princi- 
ple ? Our own convictions, founded upon observa- 
tion, are, that very few have such benevolence, either 
by nature or by grace. Our impression is that reli- 
gion has hitherto developed reverence toward God, 
carefulness of one's own life and conduct, and benevo- 
lence when it does not cost too much. 

We see nothing in the ordinary influences of soci- 
ety which tends to rectify this : nothing in secular 
institutions ; nothing in the course of business. 
Schools and seminaries cannot frame the man's 
habits, nor train the moral nature. It is in this view 
that we regard the Sabbath and the Pulpit as indis- 
pensable to society. The Sabbath is a day of bodily 
rest, doubtless ; it is a day for social culture ; it is to 
be advocated for reasons, therefore, of secular expe- 
diency. 

There is a ground higher than all these. It is the 
day for religious education. There is no substitute 
for it. The work which above all others man needs 
to have done, cannot be done except through the 
force and observance of some such institution. 

The Pulpit is the popular religious educator. Its 
object is to stimulate and develop the religious feel- 
ings. All subjects upon which men think or act, all 
relations and duties, all observances, amusements, 
occupations, and sympathies need to be discussed by 
every man from the ground of religious principles. 
Left to themselves, few men will so discuss them. 
Week by week men should hear their daily life dis- 
cussed, not from selfish principles, not from a 
ground of expediency, not from popular points of 



212 THE DAY AND THE DESK. 

view, but from the highest religious grounds. Tc 
have the whole, or the greatest part of the com- 
munity assembling for the expression of reveren- 
tial feeling is beneficial doubtless. This should be 
an element of Sabbath observance. But this very 
feeling will itself depend upon a previous education 
and development of the whole religious nature. 
That development w T ill take place most healthfully 
and rapidly by such a system of education as shall 
lead men habitually to look at all things from the 
religious stand-point. When a whole community are 
wont to have their social life, their secular business, 
their public duties, taken out of their low and selfish 
attitudes and lifted up into the light of God's counte- 
nance, and then measured, judged, repressed or 
developed, and wholly bathed or inspired by the 
spirit of conscience and of love, then they are receiv- 
ing a moral education, for which there is no other 
provision except the Sabbath and the Pulpit. And 
we regard the Day and the Desk to be as needful to 
the refined and philosophic as to the rude and unlet- 
tered, though for different reasons. Great culture is 
liable to take a selfish and subtle pride, which, 
though not as destructive to the animal economy, 
are fully as injurious to religious purity as vice and 
appetite. 



IS CONVERSION INSTANTANEOUS? 

A LETTER TO A FRIRND. 

My dear Sir : I am glad that we are of one 
belief as to the reality of that momentous change 
which is "usually called conversion or regeneration. 
We agree, too, that such a change does not require 
violence to be done to the mental organization. A 
man has the same faculties, intellectual, moral, social, 
and animal, before conversion as after. Neither are 
the constitutional functions changed ; nor the laws of 
mind, under which all mental life exists. The change 
is analogous to that which happens to a thoroughly 
and chronically diseased body, when it becomes 
decidedly convalescent. All the vital organs, and 
every minute vessel throughout the system is changed 
from a morbid to a natural condition. There is 
neither increase nor diminution of the organs of the 
body ; there is nothing taken from, and nothing 
added to the normal functions of the organs. In like 
manner, the change of mind is not one of faculty 
but of function ; and in function, the change is only 
from a disordered to a normal and healthful state. 

Is such a change instantaneous ? You think that 
it is not. Many devout Christians agree with you. 
Indeed, taking the world through, I presume that you 
are with the majority. Nor is it to be denied that you 



214 IS CONVERSION INSTANTANEOUS? 

have many apparent reasons for such doubt. Yet, it 
seems to me that both facts and analogies are against 
you when the matter is critically searched. 

Every serious change that befalls the mind may be 
said to have three stages — the preparatory stage, the 
stage of actual change, and the after stage. It is 
of neither the first, nor the last, but of the middle 
one, that we affirm instantaneousness. We say that 
the act of volition, or of voluntary transition from 
one purpose or condition of mind to another, is 
always instantaneous, although the circumstances 
which led to it, and the results which follow it, may 
be long-drawn and gradual. A man may determine 
to change his secular vocation. The reasons inclining 
him thereto may gradually arise, and grow in force 
from day to day for months, and even years. But 
the determination, at last, is a sudden, momentary 
act. After the decision, months may be required to 
carry it completely into effect. 

So that there are in a change of religious feeling 
two gradual stages and one instantaneous. The 
mind may become gradually, and, more and more, 
deeply serious ; the perception of neglected truths may 
be progressive ; the motives to a decision for or against 
a religious life may be long accumulating; but, at 
length, there is a time of choice ; and whether per- 
ceived or not, that decisive choice will be instantane- 
ous. Then comes the after stage — the carrying out 
of the determination. The eradication of bad habits, 
v the development of right feelings, the reduction of 
conduct to religious principle ; in short, the formation 
of religious character, is gradual. 



IS CONVERSION INSTANTANEOUS? 215 

In the popular mind conversion improperly includes 
all the stages which we have discriminated ; and of 
such a conversion it is rightly said that it must be 
gradual. But conversion, as a mere act of choice, is 
instantaneous. We affirm all volition to be instanta- 
neous. While one weight after another goes into the 
scale you are preparing for the counterpoise ; but 
when the index passes the centre, it passes at once. 
In like manner, when the mind holds a change in 
view, it may be long in coming toward a decision ; it 
may vacillate and swing first to the one and then to 
the other side. But when each faculty but the last 
one has consented, and at length, long resisting, that 
faculty coincides with the rest, the decision is instant 
and decisive. 

The recognition of this change, by the individual, 
will depend upon the character of his mind. Those 
who have strong emotions, all of whose changes fol- 
low or are instantly followed by the intellect, will 
perceive that a transition has been made. 

Those who have strong and positive emotions, but 
are not wont intellectually to inspect them, will feel 
that there is a change. 

Those with an even and gentle, emotive tempera- 
ment, will not intellectually recognize the mental 
transition, but will first be conscious of it from the 
results that begin to appear. 

From these statements we should be led to expect 
that religious changes would be most apparently sud- 
den among uncultivated minds, which being uncon- 
trolled, act under emotion, with extremes of flux and 
reflux ; among men of violent passions ; among those 



216 18 CONVERSION INSTANTANEOUS? 

who have been the most entirely destitute of moral 
sensibility. We* should suspect, also, that such 
changes would be, at the time, perceived by all 
minds, robust or feeble, positive or gentle, in times 
of great general excitement, in which the mind is 
more active and moves more strongly than alone, by 
reason of sympathy with other minds. Facts cor- 
roborate such expectations. 

The distinction between a real instantaneous change 
of mind, and the instant recognition of that change, 
should not be forgotten. As the change of mind may 
be induced or prevented with great facility by the 
degree of knowledge possessed of the mind on which 
influence is to be exerted, by the nature of the means 
employed, and by the skill with which such means 
are applied to the mind ; so, the recognition of that 
change will depend in part upon one's emotive tem- 
perament, and upon the habits of decision which one 
possesses ; in part, upon the condition of the mind at 
the time, and in part upon the instructions received, 
directing the mind's attention to such phenomena. 

I imagine that you will say, of all this disquisition, 
" It may be curious, but is it of practical importance ? 
Its merit is metaphysical. It will do no good in 
actual life." 

On the contrary, though it is metaphysically true, 
its chief importance is that it takes hold so earnestly 
and efficiently on practice. A mind taught to believe 
in the reality and necessity of an instant choice will 
act with directness and brevity. The belief in grad- 
ual conversion goes hand in hand with procrastination 
and mere promissory amendment. Neither can the 



IS CONVERSION INSTANTANEOUS? 217 

efforts of Christians nor of ministers be the same under 
the two systems. Those who trust to a gradual amelio- 
ration cannot in the nature of things work with that 
directness, with that sharp activity, and strong hope, 
which they have who expect an immediate result. To 
labor for a future, indefinite, gradual change, is like 
growing acorns ; to labor for an immediate change is 
like growing wheat. In the latter case, the appointed 
months are so definite, the harvest so near, and the 
result so sure, that all have hope, and faith, and 
industry ; while few are found sdwing acorn seed for 
forests, which other hands, in another generation 
shall fell and use. 



10 



NATURAL LAWS AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES. 

The human mind tends to pass from one ex- 
treme of truth to the other. The mind of com- 
munities touches both extremes before it settles 
down at the intermediate poi^t of truth. There 
is no great truth which, being pressed far enough 
in one direction, will not meet another bearing up 
against it from the opposite. There is, for instance, 
the truth of man's liberty; press it far enough and it 
will be met and restrained by the equal truth of 
man's dependence. The truth of man's individual- 
ity ; press it to a certain distance, and it will meet 
another truth, equally certain — man's associated 
life. There is the truth of the necessity of help- 
ing men, and the other truth, just as important, 
that if you help them you will destroy them ; — for 
there is nothing worse than help which impairs the 
disposition of men to help themselves, and nothing 
so bad as not to help them when they need help. 
There is also the doctrine of free agency, and the 
counter doctrine of dependence upon God. There is 
no one great line of thought which, being pursued at 
length, does not meet another coming from the oppo- 
site ; and a man's mind should stand at the centre of 
the wheel, and all truths should come to it from every 
side as the spokes of one great wheel.* 

218 



NATURAL LAWS AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES. 219 

It is on this account that men vibrate between two 
extremes ; and only after wide investigation that they 
take in all truth. 

Before men had learned much of the globe, and of 
physical laws, they were guided, in assigning causes 
for the effects which they witnessed, by their venera- 
tion and imagination. When the imagination, in- 
stead of reason, guides ignorant men, they are almost 
always wont to ascribe effects, whose causes are not 
visible, to spiritual influence, infernal or supernal. 
The progress of observation and investigation drives 
men from these superstitious notions, and one effect 
after another is wrested from the supposed agency of 
spirits, and becomes affixed to its natural cause. 
This was the case with celestial appearances — the 
comets, the Aurora Borealis. This was the case also, 
in a great measure, with diseases. It is not long since 
pestilences, plagues, and many special forms of disease, 
such as leprosy, and many varieties of convulsive 
disease which affected the nervous system, were 
regarded by the medical faculty, and by the church 
itself, as the results of spiritual or supernatural causes. 
It is only since the art of printing that these notions 
have been in a measure done away. I remember, in 
my own day, very long sermons to prove that the 
cholera did not depend on natural agencies, but that 
God held it in his hand, and dropped it down upon 
the world. 

There is no doubt that there are moral results to be 
wrought out by all these natural phenomena, but it 
was held that they were produced by preternatural 
means. It is not many ages since a man would have 



220 NATURAL LAWS AND 

been expelled from any sound church, if he did 
not believe that diseases resulted from the direct 
exercise of divine power, instead of intermediate 
causation ; and that healing was to be effected only 
through some form of spiritual incantation. 

The same w T as true of the common events of familiar 
life. Men saw evidence of the agency of good and 
of bad spirits around them, at all times, and in every 
minute event. Since the world began this has been 
common ; and it is no commoner now than ever 
before. Men have always been watching with super- 
stitious fear, lest, some charm being forgotten, lurk- 
ing mischief should gain advantage of them. 

The growth of natural science has tended very 
much to sweep away such views ; first, from philo- 
sophical minds; gradually, as general information 
increased, from the minds of all well-informed com- 
mon men : and now, in the immense progress of 
science and the diffusion of a knowledge of it among 
the common people, there is a very marked tendency 
to go to the opposite extreme, and not only to refer 
each special effect to a corresponding natural cause, 
but to deny that there are any effects which are the 
results of divine volition. Some men are ready to 
say that all things are effects of physical causes, and 
that there is no immediate divine volition exerted upon 
natural laws. This is as monstrous in science, as it is 
absurd in religion. If men take the premise that all 
effects to be expected in this world are provided for 
in organized natural laws, and that there are none 
which result from divine efficiency, they must go 
through with all the conclusions. They must hold 



SPECIAL PROVIDENCES. 221 

that human intelligence is our only guide in 
this world, or, in other words, is the only God of 
natural powers ; they must argue that no man will be 
helped in this world except so far as he helps himself, 
by finding out the paths of nature and walking in 
them — a falsehood which is all the worse because it 
is half true. For in making an axe, the head is of iron 
and the edge of steel ; but the head is the larger and 
heavier part, while the edge is but a narrow strip. 
So, with such a falsehood ; the greater part of it is 
true, but this is made only to add weight and power 
to the cutting edge, which is false. They must 
declare that the belief in a special and particular 
providence is a superstition; that God works by 
laws, and that he never interferes with or uses 
them. They must believe that, consequently, prayer 
is a mere poetic exercise ; good to those that like 
it, only because it reacts upon their feelings, and 
soothes and calms them. They must suppose that 
prayers which the heathen write, and which the wind 
offers up for them by turning a wheel, like a mill, are 
as effectual on the laws of nature as an humble 
Christian's prayer. They must hold that the doctrine 
of miracles is to be given up, as nothing but a superla- 
tive superstition. And, for this matter, such men usu- 
ally do teach that miracles always happened in dark 
ages, among ignorant men ; that many of the same 
results can now be produced by scientific causes; and 
that a belief in them, as effects divinely produced, is 
unworthy of an enlightened philosopher. 

I need not say how far men have drifted away 
from the New Testament, who have reached this 



222 NATURAL LAWS AND 

ground. Sucli a man is not only not a Christian, but 
whatever natural religion he may have, if he be con- 
sistent, he must reject the New Testament altogether, 
as an authoritative guide, «and give himself up to 
Nature and Reason. For, if there be one truth more 
especially taught in the Bible than another, it is the 
fact of God's activity and influence in human life. 
If there ever comes a day in which it can be shown 
by science, that there is no active interference of the 
divine creative will in the special affairs of men, sci- 
ence in that day will demolish the New Testament. 
When it can be scientifically demonstrated that no 
more effects are wrought in this world by the inten- 
tional interposition of divine volition, than those 
which fall out in the way of ordinary and unhelped 
natural causation, in that day, I am free to say, the 
New Testament will be overthrown. It will be re- 
garded as an amiable book, but one whose doctrines 
have been refuted, and are passed away. 

This doctrine of the presence and actual interfer- 
ence of God in the world, producing effects which 
would not have fallen out otherwise, is taught in the 
Bible as against idolatry, as against naturalism (in 
the early chapters of John), as the argument and 
foundation of prayer, of courage, of patience, and of 
hope, and as a special development, among others, 
of the incarnation of Christ to bring to light the real- 
ity of God, who wrought invisibly in life and nature, 
both before and since. 

It is to be admitted that this globe and its inhabit- 
ants are included in a system of physical laws ; that 
these are, in their nature, unchanged and unchange- 



i 



SPECIAL PROVIDENCES. 223 

able ; that they are incapable of increase or decrease ; 
that they are sufficient for all ordinary purposes of 
human life ; that the welfare and happiness of men 
depend largely upon a wise employment of them ; 
and that the progress of the race is largely to be 
effected by their wise application of them. Not 
only would I cast no obstacle in the way of scientific 
research, but I hail it as the great almoner of God's 
bounty. Men should be instructed to become 
better acquainted with the laws and influences 
which operate upon both the body and the mind, 
and upon the natural world. Men will never be as 
good Christians as they ought, until they know more 
perfectly how their bodies are put together, and what 
is in their own minds, and the natural laws of the 
one and of the other. Science is yet to interpret Scrip- 
ture, in many respects ; and I am persuaded that all 
the most characteristic elements of revealed or inspired 
truth will in the end be corroborated and not harm- 
ed, by the progress of natural science. I believe in 
everything that is true. I am not necessarily to 
believe in everything that pretends to be true ; but 
when anything is proved, whatever it overturns, I am 
bound to it by the allegiance with which I am 
bound to God ! He that denies the truth in or out 
of the Bible, denies God ! 

The progress of science lays a surer foundation 
for a belief in God's active interference in human 
affairs than has existed without it. "When maturer 
fruits of investigation shall be had, there can be no 
doubt that science itself will establish our faith in 
prayer, in miracles, and in special providence. 



224 NATURAL LAWS AND 

There are respects in which natural laws are 
bey6nd the reach of all human interference and con- 
trol. There are spheres in which light and heat can- 
not be touched and controlled. There are various 
attractions which perform in their own way their own 
work, beyond man's guidance or reach — such are the 
great laws which bind together the stellar universe. 
Great currents and passages of natural powers are put 
entirely beyond man's hand. But it is just as certain 
that there are, also, in God's system of nature, another 
class of laws which come close to us, and whose 
office is, or seems to be, to minister to human life. 
They are either modifications of great laws, or they 
are separate laws. And in respect to these, I affirm 
that they are not fructified, and do not perform their 
function, till they are controlled by human volition. 
God has made the agencies which concern human 
life, to be of such a nature, that the human mind is 
necessary to the full development and greatest fruitful- 
ness of natural laws. It is supposed by many that 
a natural law is perfect in itself; whereas it is per- 
fected, in many instances, only when it is permeated 
by human volition. 

Electricity, for instance, plays a round of its own. 
It has its own pastures, and its own great running 
grounds. It performs a large function unknown — 
beyond our reach, and without our knowledge. But 
so far as ordinary purposes of civilized life are 
concerned, electricity does nothing till we have 
taught it how to serve us ; then it runs swifter races 
for human convenience than ever were run before. 
When the mind takes hold of it, electricity becomes 



SPECIAL PROVIDENCES. 225 

a patient drudge ; so that we now work by lightning, 
which would never have done a single thing for us if 
it had not been harnessed by the human mind. But 
how, above the sea, and under the sea ere long, it 
shall carry the messages of nations, flashing from the 
East to the West, proclaiming war or heralding 
peace, and performing the great offices of civiliza- 
tion. "When man takes it by the head and says, 
" Receive my bridle," and throws over it the saddle, 
and says, " Take me for your rider," it becomes 
patient and submissive, and acknowledges man as its 
master. 

Light performs a great amount of work, — whether 
we are waking or sleeping; in its vast journeys 
through the universe — in its sun-flashes and moon- 
reflections ; but man's mind seizes this law, and does 
what Phaeton could not, drives it. We have it in our 
dwelling. We make it work along our coasts. We 
divide it, and set it at w r ork in the garden and on the 
farm. We give it the power of a living pencil, and 
make it draw artists' pictures. And yet we are in the 
midst of a carping set of philosophers who say that 
we can obey natural laws, but cannot control them. 
We do control them. 

Water has a certain round of grand effects, and these 
are performed whether a creature looks on, or not. 
The ocean never asks man what it may do with its 
own waves and upon its own domain ! The old Polar 
Sea — the only mystery now left among the oceans of 
the globe — has rolled for ages, by day and night, by 
summer and winter, with no eye to watch it — except 
from above ! That mighty unexplored wilderness of 

10* 



226 NATURAL LAWS AND 

mysterious water ! — It does what it will, and is not 
dependent upon man. But water is dependent upon 
-him for doing many things which it never could do 
otherwise. While it works in nature and on the 
globe, it is not subject to his will ; but when it works 
for human life, it immediately becomes his disciple. 
Man seizes the law, and canals shoot forth, mills live, 
irrigation turns barren heaths to gardens, tides dig 
out channels, and the patient hydrostatic pump 
drives down to her element the vast Leviathan. 
"Water could do none of these things without man's 
help. The things which natural laws can do, with- 
out human volition, are not so many nor are they 
more wonderful than the things which they do only 
by the life-giving touch of man's mind. 

Heat, in the sun, produces the seasons. How vast 
is the great fire-place of the universe ! Yet, compare 
it with the sphere in which fire works under the do- 
minion of man — in the forge, in the furnace, over the 
blow-pipe, sprving the domestic range, warming the 
house, and pouring summer throughout the year 
within the dwelling ! 

Look at Nature's Fruits. There is but a beginning 
in natural fruits, and they never, w T hen left to nature 
alone, reach beyond that point. When a man finds 
a crab-apple in the woods, he would not willingly find 
it more than once ; yet, brought to his own orchard, 
it becomes a fine fruit. But did nature make the 
pippin ? Nature had been trying her hand for years 
and years, and had never been able to get beyond 
the crab-apple. Man says to her : " You are a bun- 
gling apprentice; 1 will make you a journeyman.'' 



SPECIAL PROVIDENCES. 227 

Nature can make iron, but she never made a sword. 
She never made a jack-knife, a steam-engine, a knife 
and fork — nothing but bare, cold, dead iron. 

Now, is this a course of specious metaphysical rea- 
soning ? Is not this truth reasonable ? Are not 
these facts alleged conclusive ? And if they be true, 
what is the result? Nature has a certain crude, gen- 
eral function which natural laws perform of them- 
selves, without any regard to men. But these laws 
are made to be vitalized and directed to a higher 
development by the control of the human mind and 
will. The laws of the globe are to be taken hold of 
by man's will, as really as the laws of the body are. 
The secondary effects of natural laws are just as much 
a part of their nature as the primary, and are of equal 
importance. In fact, it is these that constitute the 
elements of civilization. While natural laws, in a 
certain way, influence and control men, yet they are, 
in the effects which they produce, just as much con- 
trolled by man, and just as dependent on him. If 
nature should abandon men, they would die, and it 
would become poverty-stricken. Let nature forget 
us, and the heart would cease to beat. The pulsa- 
tions of endless electrical currents would cease. On 
the other hand, let man forget nature, and the city 
would crumble, and go back to a wilderness ; the 
garden which had grown up from a thistle-ground, 
would return to its native condition ; cultivated seeds 
w r ould shrink back to their original poverty ; and all 
domestic animals would rebound to their wild state. 
Nature needs man to keep her at work. 

It is this view that settles all questions about man's 



228 NATURAL LAWS AND 

necessity to obey. God has not put us before nature 
to make us only its pupil, but also its- master. We 
tire not alone to look up and take, but to look down 
and control. We are not only to obey,- but also to 
rule. We are to obey for the sake of ruling. The 
whole talk about the absolute and inflexible govern- 
ment of natural law has no foundation except in fools' 
brains. It is a divided empire, and man's part is 
more than nature's. When God made man, he made 
more of nature in him than he did in all the rest of 
the world besides ! 

The question now arises — Is there a moral or scien- 
tific probability that God ever produces results by 
natural laws, in this world, which otherwise would 
not have been produced % — If we drive natural laws, 
cannot God do it ? I hold, because the Bible teaches 
it, and now I hold it more because nature and science 
teach it, that there are millions of results that neve^ 
would have fallen out in the course of nature, that 
are now continually happening on account of God's 
special mercy. The doctrine of a special providence 
is this. God administers natural laws — of the mind, 
the body, and the outward world — so as to produce 
effects which they never would have done of them- 
selves. Man can do this, and why not God ? By a 
wise use of natural laws man can make the difference 
between comfort and discomfort. He can till the 
farm, and make the seasons serve him. He can take 
natural laws, and gird himself about with them, so 
that they shall make him rich, and wise, and strong. 
Men can do it for themselves — why cannot God do 
it for them ? Men can do it for their children — for 



SPECIAL PROVIDENCES. 229 

their neighbors' children — for scores and hundreds of 
persons. A farmer that administers his estate wisely, 
will have enough, not only for himself, but for others. 
His children will be fed, the neighborhood supplied, 
and the veins of commerce swollen by the overplus 
of his sagacity. A man can say to the light, to the 
water, to the seasons, " I will, by you, make a special 
providence for this whole town," and he can do it ; 
for if he falls back, there will not be abundance, but 
if he goes forward there will be. That is not all. 
A man may be put at a point where — as Napoleon 
was, or Wellington in Spain, or Sir John Moore in 
the north of Portugal, or Clive in India — he can 
make a special providence for a nation, for a race, for 
an age, for one land or for the globe ! Now God can 
do a great deal more than man, and a great deal bet- 
ter. Is there any objection to such a doctrine? 

In regard to the doctrine of prayer, many men say, 
" Do you suppose that God will make any difference, 
whether you pray or not ?" The reply is, that God 
can, if he chooses. But whether he will, or not, 
depends very much on how I pray, and what I pray 
for. I can give my boy a book or a bow every day 
in the year, but whether I will, or not, is another 
thing. God will not do for men what men can do 
for themselves. Nor will he do for them at present, 
what they, after a proper course of development, 
will by and by be able to do for themselves. But a 
man has a right to go up along the path of his weak- 
ness, and say, " I have done what I could ; now hear 
my prayer, and do for me what I cannot do for 
myself." And if it is a thing that is needed, God 



230 NATURAL LAWS AND 

will answer the prayer. For he loves to give needed 
things better than earthly parents love to give good 
gifts to their children. Suppose you have been 
travelling in the cars, with your child, and it becomes 
restless with fatigue. Its rest has been broken by 
night-travelling, and it is hungry and asks for food. 
But a bank of snow lies across the track, and the 
train cannot go on. It waits. Anybody would feel 
pity for such a child — even if it were a negro's ! 
But how much more if it were his own? And if it 
be my child, and says, " Pa, water, water," — it cuts 
me to the heart to hear it ! But by and by, with 
double and treble elements of iron, the track is 
opened, the way is cleared, and we are hurried on to 
the next station. The first bolt I make is into the 
hotel ; for I am hungry, not for myself, but for the 
child ; and I break through the crowd back again 
into the car, with bread in my hands for the child. 
Ah, do you suppose the bread is half so sweet to his 
mouth as to my eyes that watch his eager eating ? 
But this is God's figure and not mine. He declares 
that he is more willing to give good gifts to them that 
ask him, than parents are to give to their children. 

Have you ever prayed on this principle and found 
your prayer unanswered? Not prayer for amuse- 
ment ; for some men pray, who begin with Adam, 
and come leisurely down all the way through to "thy 
kingdom come," and then wind up with the " power 
and glory, forever and ever, Amen." That is not 
prayer ; or at least it is not such praying as will 
be answered. But did you ever, under the pressure 
of a real want, go to God and say, "Thou, Father, 



■ 



SPECIAL PROVIDENCES. 231 

canst help me ; give me thine aid," and not have 
your prayer answered ? Glorious old Martin Luther 
knew how to pray. He used to take one of God's 
promises, and laying it down, would say, "Now, 
Lord, here is thy word ! If thou dost not keep it, I 
w T ill never believe thee again." This may be called 
audacious, but it was not audacity in such a Christian 
as Luther. 

What is needed is, that we should take a larger and 
broader faith, and we shall then have no difficulty 
with special providences, or miracles, or prayer ; but 
all their problems will be solved, and their mysteries 
cleared away. 



THE DEAD CHRIST. 

No one conversant with Christian art is ignorant of 
the multitudes of pictures and carvings of the Dead 
Christ. 'Every name of eminence has attempted the 
subject ; and the great masters have again and again 
repeated their conceptions. 

One of the most affecting that ever came under 
our eye, is that in the National Gallery of London, 
by Francia, we believe. The Saviour is extended 
across his mother's lap, an angel sustains his head, 
and another his feet. We gazed long at the sublime 
face, now motionless and cold, pale and silent. All 
the majesty of his life, the scenes of his wonderful 
sorrow, came back to us ; and, whether it was our 
imagination or the real expression of the picture, we 
certainly felt that we beheld the sorrow that slew the 
Saviour and the love which conquered the sorrow, 
both together ; so that it seemed to us that his thorned 
head was overspread with sadness, only that upon it 
victorious love might stand forth more evidently tri- 
umphant. It was not a boisterous triumph, nor even 
a radiant victory that was expressed, but the calm, 
serene, silent victory of patience and unutterable 
affection. We are not fond of this class of subjects. 
But this one seemed to be redeemed from the weakness 
of death, and to suggest no thought of the crushing 
of power, the dishonoring of life, but only of a strug- 



232 



» THE DEAD CHRIST. 233 

gle in which Death was the opening of a gate for a 
spirit to march forth to victory ! 

In art, and merely as art, the Dead Christ is but 
barely tolerable. In religion, and as a part of reli- 
gion, it is altogether to be disallowed. And yet, in 
the preaching of Christ, how many preach a Living 
Christ ? It is a suffering Christ, a tempted Christ, a 
dying Christ, a buried Christ. Some mysterious ben- 
efit is hoped from a devout contemplation of such a 
moving theme. But is the mere natural relation of 
such scenes to the human sympathies, to be com- 
pared with the presentation of Christ — risen, glori- 
fied, triumphantly reigning ; and reigning not for his 
own enjoyment, but for the succor, the teaching, and 
the perfection of his earthly children? Our Saviour 
does not live behind eighteen hundred years ago. 
We are not to be pilgrims along the misty track of 
Time, waiting for him in Jerusalem, and lingering in 
the garden. That he might not be local, a being of 
one age and nation, he arose to that blazing centre 
which knows no periods, no epoch, no time, but is the 
eternal Now. He is to every age a Present Saviour 
— to every soul a Living Saviour ! To our mind he is 
clothed with attributes then exhibited, when he wore 
his earthly form ; but, having gained a clear concep- 
tion of what Christ was, that he is, and that we are 
to transfer in our thoughts to the invisible One, per- 
petually hovering near us. The hope and the joy of 
Christians are not in the past, but in the present. It 
is believed that Christ knows them, that he knows 
them as individuals, by name, in all their personal 
peculiarities ; that he feels that living and efficient 



234 THE DEAD CHRIST. 

sympathy for them which their daily necessities re- 
quire; that his heart yearns, that his eye follows 
them, that his pity enfolds them. 

Christians are glad of a Saviour suffering and slain, 
because through this experience they are able to form 
a conception of w r hat nature is in Him now. And 
their great and peculiar need is a Christ who knows 
all their weaknesses of disposition without feeling dis- 
gust; who knows all their sins without bitterness; 
who knows their faults and foibles without contempt ; 
who knows their daily practical difficulties, their 
cares, their family troubles, their business perplexi- 
ties, and who knows just how all these things, acting 
on the peculiar temperament which each possesses, 
hinders his piety, mars his joy, fills him w T ith doubts, 
and afflicts him with burdens. 

It requires no great stretch of faith to believe that 
Christ has opened up a way to save those who come to 
him already converted out of their sins. But to come 
blushing from tl\e commission of some sinful thing, 
full of conscious meanness, and half-despairing, inas- 
much as, a hundred times before, you have promised 
to renounce evil, and have broken the promise; — ■ 
when in the quick and stinging confusion of shame 
and grief and discouragement, you can raise up the 
vision of a merciful Christ, looking intently upon 
you, and saying, " Son, now above all other times, 
come to me, for I am the only one that hath the pati- 
ence and the power to bring thee out of all these passes 
and temptations ;" this it is, indeed, to have a 
Living Christ ! Do we enough preach a Living Christ? 
Do we not stumble, just as the Roman Catholic 



THE DEAD CHRIST. 235 

often does, by laying hold of the earthly form of 
Christ, the life and symbols of his love ; and by 
endeavoring to extract from the past, that which the 
grave shall never give, nor the dark past, but which 
shall come, if at all, right down from the Living 
Heart of the Companionable Saviour, who though 
glorified in heaven, is none the less the earthly Guide 
of his people ? 

The faults of preaching, when such faults exist, are 
magnified in Christian experience. Few persons look 
up. Many look back, and wonder that seeing the 
place where Jesus lay, they see no angels there, and 
hear no voice. Their Christ is the Dead Christ. Some 
persons long for a tender heart, for impassioned expe- 
rience, for more earnest love. They wander in Geth- 
semane. They linger on the mount beneath the olive 
trees. They shudder upon Calvary. They search the 
garden for the grave. But Gethsemane that once 
heard the groans, now hears them no more. The 
olives yield their fruit, but no Saviour sits beneath 
their covering shadows. The hill, if one might hear 
its silent voice, would cry out " Here He was, but is 
no longer." The grave would murmur, " Come see 
where He lay — He is not here, He is arisen." And 
all the scenes of the past have now but one office, to 
instruct us how to imagine and to lay hold of a Liv- 
ing and a Present Saviour. 



AN" EXPOSITION. 

" Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious prom- 
ises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, hav- 
ing escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. And 
besides this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue ; and to vir- 
tue, knowledge ; and to knowledge, temperance ; and to temperance, 
patience; and to patience, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly 
kindness ; and to brotherly kindness, charity. For if these things be 
in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor 
unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But he that, 
lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgot- 
ten that he was purged from his old sins. Wherefore the rather, 
brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure : for 
if ye do these things, ye shall never fall : for so an entrance shall be 
ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of the 
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." — 2 Pet. i. 4-11. 

This is a passage keyed to the note of encourage- 
ment. It sets forth the virtues which cost us most, 
but which we are most easily tempted to dispense 
with ; and shows that these very qualities have a 
special relation to our future wealth and glory. The 
line of thought is this — as if the Christian graces pre- 
sented themselves to the apostle's mind as so many 
golden links in a chain or necklace, which can never 
have too many, which is rich and valuable not alone 
by the quality of each link but by the number of them 
■ — he urges us to add one to the other in consecutive 
order. To faith, add the golden link of virtue ; to vir- 
tue, knowledge ; to knowledge, temperance ; to temper- 

230 




AN EXPOSITION. 237 

ance, patience ; to patience, godliness ; to godliness, 
brotherly kindness ; and to brotherly kindness, love. 
These qualities shall make the life blessed ; that is, 
truthful. They shall not be like ragged and weary 
pilgrims in a barren and unfruitful desert, but like 
men that walk in orchards and gardens, with abun- 
dance on every hand. 

But besides the present blessing, the apostle enun- 
ciates the blessed truth that these virtues, by their 
number and richness, will have a determining influ- 
ence upon our reception into heaven, and our condi- 
tion there. 

The force of this statement is lost in our common 
version, because there are no latent meanings and 
associations attached to the English words such as 
belong to the original. Among the ancient customs 
of Greece, none is more eminent than the expressing 
good will to society by providing public entertain- 
ments. These are to be distinguished from feasts. 
They w r ere entertainments or spectacles, exhibitions 
in theatres and circuses, magnificent processions, 
public adornments, arches, wreaths, and the full 
wealth of music. These exhibitions took place on 
memorable days, commemorative of public events. 
They celebrated victories, they w T ere especially pre- 
pared as honors for public benefactors: and when 
citizens who led the nation's armies returned from 
war victorious, the scale of the entertainment was 
commensurate not only with achievements of the vic- 
torious general, but with the gladness and exhilara- 
tion of the public mind. 



238 AN EXPOSITION. 

Now, the preparing of these entertainments and 
receptions was not the business of the government 
but of private individuals. 

Rich men, who desired to win popularity, were 
permitted to bear the expenses of them. And this 
was a kind of inferior philanthropy. Among ns 
men build hospitals, found / libraries, endow colleges, 
establish funds for various charities. But such things 
were not known then. And these popular exhibi- 
tions stood in their place, as the way in which rich 
men expressed generosity, munificence and philan- 
thropy. And as these entertainments were in their 
nature expensive, so they grew more and more so, by 
the desire of men to rival each other, each one endea- 
voring to surpass all that had gone before. The verb 
employed here is epichoregethesetai (eTuxoprjyedrjoeTai.) 
It is from choregos, (x°PVy°s) & choir-leader, a band- 
leader. Now as the charge of these enormous choral 
exhibitions, in which scenic effects were added to the 
utmost wealth of music, was the means by which men 
exhibited their liberality, so, in tim,e, the prodigality 
with which rich men did spend their means became 
proverbial; and it introduced a new word into the 
language ; for the verb, derived from x°PVy°S, came 
to signify lavish abundance, profusion without limit. 
Just as Epicurus has given his own name to be a word 
of force, epicurean ; so this name choregos, the name 
of a class of men, came to signify that which these 
men were wont to do. 

It is not a little remarkable that the apostle should 
have selected this word. It is one of those flint 



AN EXPOSITION. 239 

A'ords, which being struck, flash forth with a hundred 
sparks of association. 

When he would encourage Christians to endure 
hardships, and to persevere in all virtues, he begins 
to tell them how blessed it would make them here ; 
and then glancing forward, and beginning to speak 
of the effect which it would have hereafter, there rose 
up in his view a great city, like Athens in the days of 
her integrity ; a city that glowed with marbles as the 
north glows with crystal mountains ; whose temples 
glittered on every street ; and from whose grand por- 
tals, as when Alcibiades or Pericles returned from vic- 
tory, the whole population poured out, with chaplets 
of flowers on their heads, with wreaths in their hands, 
with costly sacrifices led by white-robed priests ; with 
chanting choirs in some part singing peans ; and vast 
bands of instrumental music interluding, or carrying 
forward the patriotic anthem alone. And, with this 
vision before him, Peter cries out, If ye do these 
things ye shall not be barren even here ; and hereafter 
a universal choral outbreak from the city of God shall 
meet you. And you shall be received by the whole 
glorified throng, amid every demonstration of glad- 
ness, triumph, and honor. All this, historically, lay 
buried up in the word eTnxopjjyedrjoerat. 

There is one other element that may be noted, and 
that is, that as the care and conduct of these ancient 
public receptions were allowed, as an honor, to stand 
upon the wealth and generosity of some public bene- 
factor, so the apostle, carrying out the figure, means 
to say, that when we are arriving at our home in 
heaven, when we are drawing nigh to the open gates, 



240 AN EXPOSITION. 

and are about to enter, it is through the riches of the 
goodness of God that we shall not go in unnoticed or 
alone, but shall be met and greeted by a great and 
innumerable company whom He shall bid to come 
out, clad in the white robes "which the saints do 
wear," with harps in their hands, and with songs and 
salutations of joy upon their lips, to conduct us in tri- 
umphal procession into His Throne, that so " an 
abundant entrance may be ministered unto us." This 
is the meaning of the passage. The word abundantly 
is not happy in its function here. The true meaning 
is, For so a choral and processional greeting and 
entrance shall be given to you, by the goodness, or 
wealth, or abundance of Jesus Christ. In other 
words, the magnificence and costliness of the recep- 
tion shall be according to the wealth of Christ's 
heart. 

And what a thought ! That the virtuous lives, the 
heroic deeds which men perform on earth, are not 
unheeded, though they may be performed in obscur- 
ity, and buried in the consciousness of the heart of the 
actor ; that human life lies open to the inspection of 
heaven ; that a cloud of witnesses behold our strife, 
our defeat, or our victory ; that though, to all intents, 
we may be far off from heaven, since we are distant 
by the number of years that lie between — by the 
separation of time rather than space — that yet heaven 
is near to us ; that it broods us, watches us, sympathizes 
with us ; that though the holy and just have gone 
home to heaven, they are not separated from the 
struggling company on earth ; that they look down 
upon us here, beholding our journey thither, and 



AN EXPOSITION. 241 

await our arrival that they may greet us with the 
surprise of triumphal entrance ! This is the grand 
idea that rose before the mind of the apostle, which 
is so dimly conveyed in our imperfect translation. 



11 



THE EPISCOPAL SEBVICE. 

The Churchman of this city has a kind notice 
of some remarks made by us in the Independent. 
We are anxious that our parishioners and readers 
should reap what benefit they can from reading it, 
and we spread it before them : 

44 Among the miscellaneous matter of the present number [Feb. 
14th] will be found part of an article on " Churches and Pulpits," 
communicated to the Independent by the Rev. Henry Ward 
Beecher. It contains much that is sound on the subject of the place 
where the preacher is located, and the description of box in which he 
is ordinarily confined. It is good as far as it goes. But the truth is, 
that in the early Church the present style of pulpit was unknown. 
Sermons were originally delivered from the steps of the altar. Bing- 
ham, in his * Antiquities of the Christian Church,' tells us that the or- 
dinary place of preaching was the altar. While quoting from Mr. 
Beecher, it may, perhaps, not be uninteresting to our readers to 
know what a 4 High Puritan ' thinks of the Choral Service of the 
Church." 

The Churchman then extracts a portion of a let- 
ter from Stratford-on-Avon, published in the Star 
Papers, and proceeds : 

44 It is gratifying to read an extract so entirely commendable as 
this. We trust it may have its influence on Mr. Beecher's congrega- 
tion. It would certainly be a perfectly orthodox proceeding for Mr. 
B., when he gets into his new church, not only to have an altar, 
from the steps of which to speak to the people, but to have a choir 
of boys, properly surpliced, to make the responses and the Aniens in 
the service, which, of course, would be that of the Episcopal Church, 

242 



THE EPISCOPAL SERVICE. 243 

of which Mr. Beecher's mother is said to have been an exemplary mem- 
ber. Congregational churches in England do this ; why should not 
Mr. Belcher ? We have before us the last number of the Musical 
Review and Gazette , published in this city, which contains the. fol- 
lowing extract from the private correspondence of an American lady 
(the daughter of a New England clergyman) now absent in Europe. 
4 A few Sabbaths ago we attended service at Surrey chapel, the 
place formerly occupied >by Rowland Hill. Rev. Newman Hall is 
now the pastor, an interesting preacher, though in nothing remark- 
ble. Though a Congregational church, the service of the Church of 
England is still used, and is chanted by the whole congregation with 
so much taste, fervor, and devotion, that it is really heavenly. If 
the service would always be performed in such a manner, I should 
never wish for any other. I only wish you could hear it. I find 
congregational singing is everywhere the custom, and I think I shall 
soon become so fond of it that I shall not enjoy any other. It does 
seem much more hearty and much more devotional.' If the service 
of the Church of England is deemed sound in a Congregational church 
in England, why would not the service of the Episcopal Church of 
this country be equally acceptable and l sound ' in Mr. Beecher's 
church in Brooklyn ?" 

1. We have never had a doubt as to the excellence 
of the Episcopal service in public worship. We do 
doubt whether the constant repetition of it as the sole 
method of worship, is the best for all. But we are 
quite willing to leave that to the judgment and ex- 
perience of each person for himself. And if, on 
trial, this service is found sufficient for their religious 
wants, not only would we not dissuade men from its 
use, but we would do all in our power to make it 
more useful to them. And this we say without res- 
pect to persons. Should our own children find their 
religious wants better met in the service of the Epis- 
copal Church than in the Plymouth Congregational 
Church, we should take them by the hand and lead 



244 THE EPISCOPAL SERVICE. 

them to its altars, and commit them to God's grace, 
through the ministration of the Episcopal commun- 
ion, with unhesitating conviction that if they did not 
profit there, it would be their own fault ! 

Whether the Episcopal Church is one that builds 
up men in holiness is not an open question. There 
are too many saints rejoicing in heaven, and too 
many of the noblest Christians yet laboring on earth, 
who have derived their religious life through the 
teachings and offices of that Church, to leave any 
impartial mind in any doubt. We have not a word 
of controversy with Christian men who accept the 
service of that Church as the best means of enriching 
their faith. 

Nor are we unmindful of the debt of gratitude 
which we, and the whole Christian world, owe to the 
scholars, the teachers, the divines, and the bishops 
of that Church. Whatever historic faults may be 
raked up against it, we firmly believe that few 
bodies of Christian men, in so long a succession, can 
look back upon so many noble Christian teachers, or 
so much fruit of Christian living ! And no man can 
excite in us any unpleasant feeling by a just eulogy 
of the Episcopal Christian brotherhood. Their 
merited praise brings unalloyed pleasure to us : and 
when, in prayer, we ask God's blessing on his 
Church on earth, we mean that Church as much as 
our own. We mean every brotherhood of Christian 
men who are, according to their best light, worship- 
ing God and loving men. 

2. But, now, will our Christian brethren of the 
Churchman accord to us, as Christians in Congrega- 



THE EPISCOPAL SERVICE. 245 

tional church-fellowship, the same charity and liberty 
which we accord to them ? We claim that, for our- 
selves and for the most of those who consort with us, 
our method of Christian worship is more useful, more 
edifying and therefore better than any other. ]STot 
better for everybody, but better for us. "While we 
say frankly and heartily to child, friend, or parish- 
ioner — " If Christ is revealed to you better by the 
worship and service of the Episcopal Church, do not 
hesitate or fail to accept it," — will the Church/man 
say the same to its friends, in respect to the Chris- 
tian service and worship of the Congregational 
brotherhood ? 

We take this broad ground, that every man is at 
liberty to employ whatever form of religious wor- 
ship is best adapted to develop and maintain in him 
the true Christian life. And we hold that each man 
must determine this for himself; and that when it 
has been determined, every Christian is bound con- 
scientiously to respect another's conscience! Let 
every man be fully convinced in his own mind. 

3. As to the altar, we agree with the Churchman 
that it would be entirely orthodox to have an " altar " 
in the new church. To those who wish them, and 
who can make them serviceable, there is no reason 
in our day why they should be denied. So might 
the ark of the covenant, and tables of shew-bread, 
and the high priest's breast-plate, and many other 
things of a symbolic use, be employed. But is it a 
duty to have an altar? Can we not offer service, 
without these symbols, acceptably to God? If an 
education makes them a hindrance and not a help, 



216 THE EPISCOPAL SERVICE. 

are we to have them intruded upon us as necessary 
parts of worship ? 

"We believe in Christ as a sacrifice, once offered 
up for all and forever. "We need no visible altar 
upon which to lay our invisible sacrifice. Faith is 
to us better than sight by means of symbols. 

As to " surpliced boys " — we have them already. 
The whole congregation is a choir, and our boys, 
bright and happy, unite and respond with their elders. 
The surplice which they wear is just that thing 
which their dear mothers threw over them when 
they left home. And angels' hands could do no 
more than mothers' hands do for darling children ! 

And now, in respect to this whole matter, we 
accord to our Episcopal brethren everything that 
they can ask, except the right of making their lib- 
erty our law. "When we are satisfied that their 
service and method are better adapted to us than 
our own, and more certain to promote piety, we shall 
unhesitatingly adopt them ; but so long as we believe, 
under the circumstances, that our method of worship 
is better for us than any other, which shall we fol- 
low — the judgment of other men in our behalf, or 
our own judgment ? 



CONGREGATIONAL LITURGY. 

The discussion of the question of Liturgies in Con- 
gregational churches is sufficiently novel to attract 
general attention. It ought not to be supposed, how- 
ever, that this is a discussion which has arisen upon 
foregone facts. It has been begun for the sake of pro- 
ducing facts. 

If any church, or churches, had gone forward in 
the exercise of their own rights, to frame a liturgy 
and to employ it ; if it had been said that such 
church or churches had no right to do so ; and if 
this discussion were in the nature of an examination 
of such churches on the one hand, and a defence of 
them on the other, we need not say on which side we 
should stand. Every true church has the right to 
determine the method of conducting its own public 
worship. If they are satisfied with their own ser- 
vices, no one has a right to call them to account. 
But, in such cases, no one is bound to feel an interest 
in them, in spite of his own taste. If one church 
loves a liturgy, the neighboring church is not bound 
to love it, nor to relish the use of it, nor maintain that 
fellowship which can stand only in common sympa- 
thies. 

The use of a liturgy, then, ought not to work 
ecclesiastical disfellowship. But, on the other hand, 
there is no cause of complaint if it does morally and 
socially alienate brethren of coordinate churches 
from sympathy and cooperation in worship. 

247 



248 CONGREGATIONAL LITURGY. 

Bui the case, at present, is far less serious than this. 
All that has been done, so far as the public know, is 
this : Some Christian brethren suspect that a great 
advantage would often accrue to Congregational 
churches if a change were to take place, by which 
the whole body of worshippers were made to take a 
more active part in the public services; and they 
believe that certain fixed forms of worship, to be used 
by the whole congregation in common, or respon- 
sively, would do much toward enlisting a more 
active participation of the whole people in public 
worship. 

"We certainly think that much needs to be done to 
inspire the services of our churches with more 
interest ; and that, in some way, the whole congrega- 
tion should become cooperative in public worship. 

But we are clearly of opinion that a liturgy in 
whole or in part, will be of very little service. The 
trouble in our churches is the want of vital Christian 
feeling. A liturgy will not produce that. 

"We do not think it needful to discuss the merits of 
liturgies. They are, under some circumstances, use- 
ful. But they belong to a system of helps which the 
whole history and spirit of Congregationalism dis- 
owns. And it is not to be supposed that the Congre- 
gational churches will change the whole spirit of their 
economy for any slender advantages which may be 
supposed to linger within fixed and prescribed forms 
of worship. For our own part, if we were ready for 
a full liturgy, we should prefer the Episcopal, which 
has the extrinsic merits of age and long usage, and 
various historic associations. But it is not proposed 



CONGREGATIONAL LITURGY. 249 

to adopt a full liturgy. It is not, we believe, pro- 
posed to advocate a common and general form. A 
mixed service, in part liturgical and in part extempo- 
raneous, it is thought, would be serviceable in some 
single churches. 

We have no objection to the trial by any church 
that chooses to do it. But we are sure that the 
experiment will fail. The free element will overrun 
the fixed forms and choke them ; or else, if the forms 
are clung to, they will expel the extemporaneous ele- 
ments, and end in drawing the church over to a full 
liturgical service. But both of these elements, the 
movable and the fixed, the voluntary and the pre- 
scribed, the extemporaneous and the formal, can not 
coexist. The one will kill the other. 

The experiment is not new. Several denomina- 
tions have already tried it, the Moravians and the 
Methodists being of the number. But of what 
degree of benefit in the Methodist Episcopal service, 
is the partial liturgy which is in the Book ? Not 
half of their people know that there is such a thing. 
It is not compulsory. It is interpolated by extempo- 
raneous offices of devotion ; and the result has been 
that the forms stand empty and soulless, while the 
life and power of the Methodist worship lies in the 
extemporaneous fervor of minister and people. 

We think that this would be the case still more 
among Congregational churches. And one or two 
things would, in time, happen. Either the liturgy 
would wither and hang upon the service like a last 
year's dried blossom dangling upon the vine, or those 
churches which retained liturgies w T ith benefit, would 

11* 



250 CONGREGATIONAL LITURGY. 

shrink away wholly from extemporaneous services. 
In this last case, a gradual division would take place, 
and some Congregational churches would be wholly 
liturgical, and some anti-liturgical ; and two effectual 
policies of worship would soon strike division through 
the brotherhood of churches. 

There need not, how T ever, be the least excitement 
about this matter. No one need to fear that the old 
Congregational churches are in danger of flying off 
like a flock of birds into new trees. The old Congre- 
gational churches are not in danger of accepting an 
innovation against which they have educated instincts 
and hereditary historic prejudices as high as the walls 
of Jerusalem. 

Here, then, w T e stand. A great want exists in our 
worship. Half liturgies will never remedy that 
want, and w T hole liturgies are just as bad. But, 
good or bad, the churches will never accept them. 
It seems to us, then, a waste of time to attempt feeble 
and uncongenial expedients. The stately simplicity 
of Congregational worship resents all patches and 
incongruous interpolations. We must abandon the 
whole method, and go over in a body to real, earnest, 
thorough liturgical services ; or we must accept the 
Congregational idea of extemporaneous worship in 
all its fullness, and seek a remedy for lifelessness in a 
more hearty use and proof of our own system. Any 
cross between Congregational worship and liturgy 
will be mongrel, and can neither live with health 
nor propagate itself at all. 

If then, it is said, that our public services are bar- 
ren, we reply, they are. But not for want of common 



CONGREGATIONAL LITURGY. 251 

forms of devotion ; for, churches which employ these 
forms, with every conceivable means of making them 
effectual, are just as meagre as ours. Indeed, if the 
Methodist, the Baptist, the Presbyterian and the 
Congregational churches be taken together, as having 
practically an extemporaneous service, and the Epis- 
copal Church be regarded as liturgical, we are not 
unwilling to have a comparison made between the 
two methods of worship, in the very respect of pro- 
ducing a common feeling of devotion in the whole 
congregation. 

If any single church — having tried the simplicity 
of Congregational worship and failed, or, not having 
failed — yet, if from some peculiarity of the congre- 
gation — some decided predilection for prescribed ser- 
vices — if such a church believes that it can do better 
by half liturgical worship than by our usual methods 
— then we would not put a straw in their way. We 
would say, Go on ; make your experiment. And 
when enough time has elapsed to form a ripe judg- 
ment of the result, we will accept the trial for what 
it shall have proved itself worth. 

But it does not seem to us well to urge such a 
course upon the Congregational churches before any 
trial has been made. We do not think it needful to 
ask hundreds of churches to embark in an enterprise 
which must be regarded, even by its warmest advo- 
cates, as but an experiment. 

Some who plead for an addition to the old Puritan 
customs of public worship, do so because ' they 
believe the present methods to be very fruitless and 
meagre. It is said that the services of the Sabbath- 



252 CONGREGATIONAL LITURGY. 

day, in the church, are barren, and especially defi- 
cient in this, that the congregation, as such, bear no 
sufficient part. They are sung for, prayed for, and 
preached to ; but they themselves have nothing to 
do. They are literally an audience ; they are 
hearers. They are not participants but recipients. 
It is thought that forms of prayer, recitations of 
Scripture, and responsive utterances, would go far 
toward producing in the whole congregation a com- 
mon interest in the religious worship, by making the 
whole to bear a part. 

So earnest are we that the whole people should 
unite in public worship, that, if there were no better 
way, we should certainly advocate a liturgy. But 
we do not think that we have to go a step out of our 
own system to find means for arousing and thoroughly 
developing the religious feelings of the whole con- 
gregation in public worship. 

The fundamental idea of Roman Catholic worship 
is, that the priest and the ordinances are depositories 
of Divine grace — that the people are simply recipi- 
ents. 

Protestant Christianity makes Christ the soul-foun- 
tain, and each individual Christian is his own priest. 
A Catholic church has its public service adminis- 
tered by its priests ; a Protestant church has its 
service administered by its priests — which are the 
people. 

The social religious element is the distinctive pecu- 
liarity of Protestant Christianity. Our churches will 
never fulfill their own social idea of public worship, 
until it becomes the joint act of the whole congrega- 



CONGREGATIONAL LITURGY. 253 

tion. Not the separate worship of individuals sitting 
together, but the mingling and harmonizing of the 
individual devotion of the whole congregation. 

The preaching meetings of our churches on the 
Sabbath day, do not represent our whole idea of the 
worship of Protestant churches. The prayer-meet- 
ings, the conference-meetings, the Bible-classes and 
Sabbath-schools — these, together with the Sabbath 
services, are to be regarded as composing the wor- 
ship. "We are to look for the full expression of our 
peculiar ideas, not in that part which the Sabbath 
day and the public assembly affords, but in all that 
the church does in its minor meetings. And it will be 
found that any well-instructed and rightly-trained 
church is a body whose power resides in its whole 
membership ; that its worship is ministered to it by 
its own members ; and that the legitimate end of the 
ordained ministry is to evolve a social religious minis- 
tering power in the congregation. 

"We may now suggest some reasons why our 
churches do not to a greater degree fulfill their 
design : 

1. One of the most obvious reasons is, that minis- 
ters of the Gospel have not a clear and proper idea 
of their functions. They know generally that they 
are to preach to the community, and that they are to 
edify the church. But to be a preacher of sermons, 
a mere teacher in the pulpit, is not half a minister's 
work. He is set to drill a body of Christian men, so 
that they shall individually and collectively be a 
witnessing and ministering body. The voice of the 
whole church, and not the voice of its ministry, is 



251 CONGREGATIONAL LITURGY. 

that which God appointed for the preaching of the 
Gospel. If now a minister only preaches — and so 
preaches that his brethren wish to hear no one speak 
but himself — if, instead of inspiring life-power in 
them, which he then guides and trains them to fitly 
express, he extinguishes their zeal, and fashions a 
public sentiment so rigid and exacting that no man 
in the church dare utter his feelings, his thoughts, or 
his experiences, unless he can do it for edification, 
(i. e., do it in rhetorical fluency, with logical precision, 
and with a certain finish of literary good-breeding), 
he defeats the very end of his ministry, and practically 
disowns the Congregational idea of a minister. 

Thus we see that many churches are nothing but 
listeners to a preacher. The society has an organic 
life and function ; but the church, in such cases, is 
but little better than a roll of names of persons bap- 
tized, initiated, permitted to partake of the Lord's 
Supper, and expected to enjoy a good sermon. But 
to have a real life and function of their own, to have 
a social, loving atmosphere into which each one 
develops the blossoms of his religious life, to be a 
body competent to edify itself, to build itself up, and 
to stand, by its own vital power, as a multiform 
instruction in the community — such an idea is 
scarcely thought of. And hence it is that ministers 
come to be mere instructors. They do not edu- 
cate. They do not train. They are not seeking 
to develop the gifts of the individual members of the 
church — to drill them in the suitable exercise of 
those gifts. They seek to do v good to their flock as 
individual Christian men. But they do not group 



CONGREGATIONAL LITURGY. 255 

these individual Christian men into a community in 
such, a way that they give utterance as a church, by 
their own voices, to the truth of Christ, or to their 
experience of God's guidance and goodness. So that 
the church is not an epitome of God's multitudinous 
teachings ; it is not the harmony of all the voices 
with which Christ speaks to the souls of his children. 
It is a mere class, coming together to hear what a 
teacher shall say to them, and then going away and 
profiting as best they may. ISTow a minister of the 
Gospel should be a preacher of ideas, of the connec- 
tion of ideas (which is theology) ; he should be a 
teacher of duties, i. <?., he should apply principles to 
( the experiences of life — he should strengthen, com- 
fort, inspire, and warn his people ; but all these 
things should be but a part of a system of drill, by 
which the whole church shall become in like man- 
ner a teaching body. He is to see that his members 
are taught to pray — to pray with each other ; to speak 
— to speak to edification. He is to develop the gifts 
of each in such a way as that the whole church shall 
have the benefit. One man is fitly a thinker ; another 
man is a man of observation and experience. One 
has zeal and native power ; another has richness of 
heart and blessed simplicity. One has courage, an- 
other has the power" of consolation ; one is powerful 
in prayer, another in conversation. It is the duty of 
the minister to bring forth these gifts and make them 
the property of. the whole church. A church has a 
right to the gifts of every one of its members, and the 
minister is set to disclose and develop them. He is 
not to lean upon the strong ; to avail himself of the 



256 CONGREGATIONAL LITURGY 

service of those already developed. It is his office to 
take hold of every individual man, and to educate 
him, so that he may bring forth the one, or five, or 
ten talents which are committed to him, for the use 
and profit of all his brethren. 

A man of books, a man of ideas, a man of sermons, 
is not Christ's idea of a minister. Follow me, and I 
will make you fishers of men. A minister is a man 
of men. He is an inspirer and driller of men. 

Is it a marvel that churches take little part in 
public exercises ? They are not expected to do it. 
The minister does not expect it. It is not for that 
that he preaches. He is a sermon-preacher, not a 
church-trainer. The people understand it so ; they 
go to church to have him pray for them. He is to 
preach to them ; he is to visit the sick, bury the dead, 
marry the affianced, baptize the children, live in a 
social relationship to a round of families, preach 
twice on the Sabbath, keep the church free from 
speculative heresies. But the power that lies in so 
many hearts dormant, the united power of such a body 
of witnesses as the church would be if it had a real 
voice, if it rose up and spoke, week by week, to the 
people — that is scarcely dreamed of. 

Now, the church ought to be a hundred times 
stronger than the minister. The pews ought to have 
more power than the pulpit. No minister has done 
his duty who is himself the central power in a con- 
gregation. He is to be a power-producer; he is to 
see the success of his ministry in the church which 
he builds up. And as the architect stands dwarfed 
and trembling in the presence of the cathedral which 



CONGREGATIONAL LITURGY. 257 

he has himself builded, when all its walls and col- 
umns have gone up, and all its arches are completed, 
and all its pinnacles and spires lift up their heads to 
God everlastingly — so a pastor should stand in a vast 
disproportion of strength before the fullness of the 
power of his own church. For, can any one heart, 
either by original gift or by study, ever equal all the 
gifts which God bestows upon a hundred men ? Is 
not all the work of Christ in a hundred souls more 
rich and wonderful than ever can be a single indi- 
vidual's experience ? Is there one flower created 
equal to a whole prairie or garden, sheeted with the 
light and perfumed with the fragrance of a hundred 
flowers growing in profusion ? 

God's work in the human soul, day by day, is the 
most illustrious of all the events which history chron- 
icles. Other events are more obvious, and more 
impressive to our vulgar senses, that love the flash 
and sound of physical deeds. But the watch- 
ings, the fears translated to victory, the faith and 
glow of love, the aspirations and achievements, the 
visions of heaven, the peace of God descending thence 
— there are no other things of such dignity as these, 
nor, when simply uttered, of such power. Indeed, 
the supremest power of Divine truth is not when it is 
uttered in idea-form, or as apprehended by intellect, 
but when exhibited in heart-forms, or as it is evolved 
in actual life-experiences. And there is something 
sublime in the conception of a great assembly of men 
— holding forth some one truth, first by the voice of 
its teacher, and then reflecting upon it from a hun- 
dred hearts that light by which God taught it pecu- 



258 CONGREGATIONAL LITUEGY. 

liarly to them ; so that at length each should behold 
the glowing truth, not in the narrow line of his own 
experience, but in the clustered fullness of the experi- 
ence of multitudes. Such preaching by the voice of 
the whole church would have a power with the com- 
munity of which now we have no idea except from 
analogies. Let a hundred merchants and eminent 
mechanics — known and trusted men — gather in some 
vast hall in New York, and testify in regard to some 
new method of gaining wealth. Let them, one by one, 
declare the reality of the riches, exhibit his own win- 
nings, declare the facility with which thousands more 
could acquire, and that joint testimony of a hundred 
honest men would strike a fever through a city in a 
day, and the veins and arteries of every occupation 
would throb with impatient desire. Such is the 
power given to a truth when many men, corroborat- 
ing it, give it a blessed panic-power. A truth borne 
forth upon the power of a single heart is great ; but 
what when it is sent forth upon the blasts of a thou- 
sand hearts ? We have made proof of truth-power 
only in narrow lines. There is to be a development, 
of which we suspect little, of the power of truth swept 
along the tide of enthusiasm which sympathetic mul- 
titudes give. Conversions, then, will be like light- 
ning strokes. For it is not enough for a man to have 
an idea of truth — he needs to have a moral shock, a 
soul-stroke, that shall electrify his being, and give 
to the truth instantaneous and overwhelming power. 
This enthusiasm comes from God. Like other gifts, 
it comes instrumentally. The simultaneous preach- 



CONGREGATIONAL LITURGY. 25'9 

ing of the Gospel by communities will be an instru- 
ment of such results. 

The first step, then, toward a larger .participation 
on the part of the congregation in public worship is 
to begin in the minister's own heart and design. 
And so superficial a thing as a common form of 
prayer, or a joint confession, or a psalmic response, 
will not train a church. There must be a common 
life in the church. It must be a minister's concep- 
tion of his office and function, not merely to impart 
ideas ; but by an impartation of ideas, and feeling, and 
personal social influence, to impart a real, common reli- 
gious life to the church. When that exists, there will 
be no more trouble about unity and interest in a con- 
gregation. They will be like a rich soil full of roots 
and seeds, that shoot up in exuberant richness, and 
though differing through genus and species, yet grow- 
ing in perfect harmony. But a dead church with a 
liturgy on the top of it is like a sand desert covered 
with artificial bouquets. It is bright for the moment. 
But it is fictitious and fruitless. There are no roots 
to the flowers. There is no soil for roots. The 
utmost that a liturgy can do upon the chilly bosom 
of an undeveloped, untrained church is, to cover its 
nakedness with a faint shadow of what they fain 
would have, but cannot get. 



CHUBCHES AM) ORGANS. 

When a church is to be built, the question usually 
is from the outside to the inside, and not from inside 
to out. It is not said, " Here are a thousand people ; 
in our system of worship the effects to be produced 
require such and such conditions for the congrega- 
tion, and the church building must go up around 
these uses and be but an instrument of them." It is 
much more often the case that the question takes 
this form : " Where shall we put it ? In what style 
shall it be- built ? Who shall be the architect ? How 
high shall the steeple be, and how fine can we afford 
to make the interior ?" Then, when these questions 
are settled, it is also, incidentally, a matter of con- 
sideration how to seat the people, and whether the 
building can be made available for hearing. As to 
the pulpit, but one thing is usually considered neces- 
sary, and that is, that it should be put as far as possi- 
ble from all sympathetic contact with the people to 
be influenced by it; that it should be so constructed 
as to take away from the speaker, as far as it can be 
done, every chance of exerting any influence upon 
those whom he addresses. Therefore the pulpit is 
ribbed up on the sides, set back against the wall, 
where it looks like a barn-swallow's nest plastered on 
some beam. In this way the minister is as much as 
possible kept out of the way of the people, and all 

260 



CHURCHES AND ORGANS. 261 

that is left is his voice. Posture, free gesture, motion, 
advance or retreat, and that most effective of all ges- 
tures, the full form of an earnest man, from head 
to foot, right before the people ; in short, the whole 
advantage which the body gives when thrown into 
argument or persuasion, are lost without any equiva- 
lent gain. In this sacred mahogany tub or rectan- 
gular box, the man learns every kind of hidden 
awkwardness. He stands on one leg and crooks the 
other, like a slumbering horse at a liitching-post ; he 
leans now on one side of the cushion, or lolls on the 
other side. And when a man, thoroughly trained by 
one of these dungeon pulpits to regard his legs and 
feet as superfluous, except in some awkw r ard and 
uncouth way to crutch him up to the level of his 
cushion and paper, is brought out upon an open plat- 
form, it is amusing to watch the inconvenience to 
him of having legs at all, and his various experiments 
and blushing considerations of what he shall do with 
them! 

Is it any wonder that so little is done by preaching, 
w T hen, in a great church, with a small congregation, 
so scattered that no two persons touch each other, the 
bust of a man, peering above a bulwark, reads a stale 
manuscript to people the nearest of whom is not less 
than twenty-five feet from him ? The wonder is that 
anything is ever accomplished. Daniel Webster is re- 
ported to have said, that no lawyer would risk his re- 
putation before a jury if he had to speak from a pulpit, 
and that he considered the survival of Christianity in 
spite of pulpits as one of the evidences of its divinity. 



262 CHURCHES AND OKGANS. 

We do not voucli for the truth of this as an anecdote, 
but we indorse it as a truth in philosophy. 

Next comes the question, shall we have an organ ? 
What do they want an organ for ? We suspect that 
it would be difficult for the most part of the congre- 
gation *to say, unless it were that other fashionable 
churches had organs ; or, that it formed a cheerful 
and pleasant interlude to the tediousness of other 
parts of worship. 

But, Young America means to have an Organ! 
And the question is not, how large a one is needed ; 
but, how large a sum can be raised to buy it. If an 
organ of ten stops is good, it is innocently reasoned, 
an organ of twenty would be twice as good. As soon 
as it is \known that an organ is to be built, down 
come the agents of various organ establishments, each 
one proving all the rest to be mere pretenders, and 
their work trash. Then comes bidding and underbid- 
ding. The builder that will give the most for the 
money is to have the job. One will, for the said 
number of dollars, give fifteen stops, another twenty, 
another twenty-five, and so he gets the organ. Now, 
a stop, in the understanding of a church committee, is 
a small piece of wood sticking out of the organ by 
the side of the manuals, with a piece of ivory on the 
end of it, with some name cut and blacked in, as 
" Pedal," " Coupler, Swell, and Choir," " Op. Diap- 
ason," " St. Diapason," etc. Of course a skillful 
builder can easily multiply stops fast enough, if the 
church committee are only ignorant enough. To cut 
a stop in two, and give two registers to it, makes two 
out of one in a manner very inexpensive to the 



CHURCHES AND ORGANS. 263 

builder, and quite satisfactory to most cliurch com- 
mittees. Or, to let a stop run only half way through 
the organ, speaking only either in the upper or the 
lower half; or better yet, to let stops run in separate 
pipes through half the organ and then flow^ together 
into one series of pipes for the bass, so that, like a 
river, many small streams meet and go out to sea in 
one channel — these and many other methods enable 
a skillful organ-builder to gratify the vanity of a 
church and the solidity of his own pocket at the same 
time. 

But, when the organ is bought, put up, paid for, 
then comes the tug of war. "What is an organ good 
for, at any rate ? To what end is it put into the 
church ? Can any one tell us ? Or, must we come 
back to the subject, and give our own notions ? 



PATEIOTISM AND LIBERTY* 

In any other place, fellow-citizens, I should have 
claimed for myself to-clay personal liberty and 
exemption from public service, but from my own 
city I can claim no such exemption, since I believe 
that every man ought to hold his services subject to 
the will and control of his fellow-citizens upon such 
an occasion as thi£, in every way that shall conduce 
to virtue, to public spirit and to patriotism. 

We have returned from the laying of the corner 
stone of a City Armory — a circumstance not of so 
much interest in itself as in the historic incidents 
connected with it. For, that structure is to stand 
upon the site of the old Free Library, the corner- 
stone of which was laid some thirty-three years ago 
with imposing ceremonies. Officiating upon that 
occasion, and dignifying it by his presence, was that 
immortal man and true patriot, Lafayette, one of the 
few men whom we can afford heartily to praise — not 
his head at the expense of his heart, not his heart at 
the expense of his head, but head and heart and hand 
— the whole man together. His life will bear search- 
ing in youth, in middle age, in old age, and after his 
departure from life. You need hide nothing in the 
grave. 

* Address delivered at the laying of the Corner-stone of the Brook- 
lyn City Armory, on the Fourth of July, 1858. 
2&1 



PATRIOTISM AND LIBERTY. 265 

We should speak well of Lafayette. He was one 
of those few men in whom the most romantic senti- 
ment for liberty in youth, ripened, in manhood, into a 
moral principle enduring as life! He was a man 
without guile, without selfishness ; a man whose very 
bread it was to love his fellow men. In his own land, 
and, in this, his second home — as much his own as 
France, and more — he devoted himself freely to the 
welfare of the people. He never retracted what he 
had said or done, nor marked dark lines of inconsist- 
ency across his clear record. "While thousands like 
him declared for liberty, when liberty was still in a 
state of fermentation, he, almost alone, among thou- 
sands of prominent men in Europe, remained its firm 
votary, sacrificing for liberty almost everything dear 
to manhood. 

That name is fitly associated with the name of 
Washington in the annals of our American liberty, 
and I count it a good omen — since so large a portion 
of our citizens are immigrants, and for years must 
continue to be — I count it a good omen that in look- 
ing back to our Revolutionary heroes, there is 
scarcely a nation on earth that cannot point to some 
distinguished officer, and say, " That man, who bled 
with your fathers for liberty, was of our blood." 
It may seem, fellow-citizens, that the laying of the 
I corner-stone of an armory is scarcely a fit occasion 
| for me to dwell upon, or the day of the national inde- 
j pendence a proper time to call out the enthusiasm of 
i a man of my profession. But I was a man before 
I was a minister. Whatever any man should feel, I 
j feel. Whatever any man should say, I ought to 

12 



266 PATRIOTISM AND LIBERTY. 

speak ; I am a citizen, a Christian citizen. Is any- 
thing higher than that? I feel, therefore, that it is 
just as fitting that I should speak some words conge- 
nial to such an occasion as that any other man in the 
citizenship of this city should speak them. 

If it shall seem a bad auspice that a free library 
should give place to an armory, you will remem- 
ber that the library found itself too strait, and so 
removed otherwhere, and the building had been 
appropriated to civil purposes, and finally had been 
abandoned even for these. Nothing, therefore, is 
sacrificed. 

"We may well take this occasion of the founding an 
armory, to consider the great difference between our 
modern free cities and those of former days. They 
were beleagured with walls ; our walls are the bodies 
of free citizens ! movable walls, pedestrian walls. 
"Wherever there is an enemy there is a wall, made up 
of citizens. Unlike other cities, in other lands, we 
have no forts and citadels, if we except the household 
forts commanded by fathers and mothers, and garri- 
soned by them and their children. 

There never were more peaceful places than our 
citizen armories, where our citizen soldiers assemble 
to carry on the picturesque part of war, without risk 
or peril. 

Build, then, these peaceful Castles of Indolence for 
our citizen soldiery, and let them have a home among 
us. The very differences between our armories and 
those abroad are the differences between free cities in 
free America and the cities of the old and oppressed 
nations. 



PATRIOTISM AND LIBERTY. 267 

But let me take occasion, upon the erection of this 
building, to speak of the better armories which have 
been long building among us, for I hold that our best 
armories are the houses which stand along our streets. 

Wherever you shall find a father and mother, and 
a houseful of children, there is the best commander, 
the best drill-sergeant, the best soldiers. The free 
and well-conducted families — these are our armories. 
Wherever you shall find an intelligent laboring pop- 
ulation — a population who labor, not drudge ; whose 
labor is not compulsory, enforced, stolid, but whose 
heads work first, and then animate their hands with 
brains to work more skillfully afterwards — cheerful, 
unrepining labor — these are our industrial armories. 
And at every point where you can congregate a band 
of these laborers, men who sing while they work, and 
come from town wiping the sundown sweat from 
their brows, to be cheered with the comforts of home, 
and wife, and children — these are our armories. 

Again, we have our schools, to which all our 
children have access. ~No matter how poor a man 
may be in money, if he is rich in children, those 
family jewels, his children shall have the benefit of 
our schools. They teach all alike, the children of 
all religious faiths, nationalities, ranks and conditions ; 
they teach them all the common ideas and duties of 
American citizens. These are our truest armories, 
and the cities which have these are inexpugnable. 

I might go on to point to our churches, whence, as 
from a fount, we draw our truest notions of personal 
manhood, of personal liberty, of municipal privileges 
and municipal rights. These are some of the institu- 



268 PATRIOTISM AND LIBERTY. 

tions which supervise our domestic armories and 
make them efficient. 

The occasion of laying the corner-stone of the Free 
Library by the patriotic Frenchman, Lafayette, 
called together by diligent drumming and large 
counting eight thousand people. This was the popu- 
lation of Brooklyn thirty-three years ago ! Who then 
had the prescience by which he could have suspected 
such a day as this ? And if one had dared to say 
then that in thirty-three years two hundred thousand 
inhabitants would have lived upon this side of the 
river, he would have bid fair for a berth in a lunatic 
asylum. 

Tet how has our population augmented beyond all 
anticipation ! Instead of that little cozy neighbor- 
hood village, we have become the third city in the 
Union. The third not alone arithmetically — for 
though a city requires men and women, men and 
women alone do not make a city. By their heads, 
and hands, and hearts, their institutions, their homes, 
their industry, the men and women of Brooklyn have 
constituted a city of which men may be proud and 
boast. I think the sun does not upon earth shine 
upon a more fair and beautiful city. 

You may say that this is the adulation of a fond 
son, and that I think it meet to praise the place of 
my residence. Nevertheless, if I am deceived I am 
deceived, for I verily believe there is not upon this 
continent a site so beautiful, and so well adapted for 
forming a large permanent city. 

It cannot be many years (for we may look forward 
as well as look back) — I think it cannot be many 



PATRIOTISM AND LIBERTY. 269 

years before there will be half as many people living 
in Brooklyn as there were in the whole country when 
our war of Independence began. I think it not 
extravagant to say that if we go on prospering as we 
have for a few years past, our borders extending, that 
in a few years we shall become the city second, per- 
haps, to but one on this continent. I do not know 
that I should make even that exception, for Brooklyn 
seems to be nearer to New York than New York is 
to herself. These cities, twelve miles long, on long, 
narrow islands, are not the cities to grow like your 
circular cities, which have room to spread in every 
direction, and we may yet swell our population beyond 
that of New York ! We are destined to be an 
immense city, and it becomes us to lay well the foun- 
dations of these institutions which are to make our 
memory precious in time to come, and hand down to 
our children a legacy better than that our fathers 
handed down to us. "We have begun well in our 
schools and churches, already renowned, but there is 
still in our institutions a work for you and for me. 
We shall not be true and faithful to our city and to 
the time in which we live if we do not hand them 
down more noble and richer in all the elements of 
civilization and progress than we received them. 

Standing here upon the day set apart to commemo- 
rate the achievements of our fathers, we ought not to 
forget that we are citizens, not only of this city, but 
also of this great republic. We remember and praise 
the sufferings and achievements of our fathers, but 
they suffered and struggled willingly. For some 
years past, it would seem that the celebration of this 



270 PATRIOTISM AND LIBERTY. 

day lias been growing into disrepute, and it is well to 
revive the custom. Some man surely can always be 
found to speak wwthily, wisely, and well, on the 
great subject of human rights and human liberty, to 
which the day is sacred. 

"What is the Fourth of July ? Is it only a day for 
explosion of powder, a day for outside show and cele- 
bration ? Is it not the day that stands for the estab- 
lishment of liberty and for the rights of man ? The 
soundest and truest doctrine ever promulgated was 
that sustained by our fathers in the achievement of 
our independence. It is that which mak^s us what 
we are ; which makes this day the Sabbath of Liberty. 

Let me say a few words respecting our country, 
than which a fairer and nobler God never made. 
Methinks he hid it for ages behind the heap of ocean 
waters, that he might here at last build up a mighty 
Christian civilization, that should realize the fondest 
hopes and expectations of prophets and seers. So 
broad a land, so diversified in its treasures, so fertile 
in its soil, partaking the boon which every climate 
has to confer, stretching through so many lines of 
longitude in the West, so many of latitude in the 
North and so many in the South — so fair, so large and 
so rich a land, methinks the sun nowhere else be- 
holds in his daily journey. God has poured a mixed 
people upon this land. Races mingled together 
make a better population than consanguineous stocks. 
God has poured in hither lavishly from every nation. 
Some men leave their country, it is true, for their 
country's good, but all do not. They that are too rest- 
less and enterprising to remain at home ily to the 



PATRIOTISM AND LIBERTY. 271 

JSTew "World. They whose young blood cannot walk 
the old paces and take the old stale customs ; they 
are the men who fly their country for their own good, 
and pour upon these shores for ours. We take them 
as a tribute from every nation under the sun — the 
young, the earnest, the best blood, the motive power 
of the nation. 

Such blood mingled with ours, if educated and 
Christianized, w r ill give stamina, variety, genius, and 
all the elements of national power and progress such 
as w r ere never before brought together. This is our 
population now. The Atlantic greets us on the East, 
we wash our feet in the Pacific, we dip our hands in 
the Gulf, we bathe our brow in the northern lakes ; 
on every side God gives no other boundaries than 
mighty oceans. Enclosed in this vast area, this 
nation is to make a mark in history which no other 
nation ever made. 

But this variety of climate and diversity of inter- 
ests is one great cause of danger ; — as ships built too 
long and not strong enough, are in danger of break- 
ing in the middle, so we, with conflicting interests 
upon one side and upon the other, our citizens so 
separated by distance as to lack personal sympathy 
and frequent intercourse, are in like danger of part- 
ing somewhere. 

Besides this, there are men who would sacrifice 
their country for their own advancement, and there is 
nothing that can save this nation from the perils that 
surround it but a spirit of true religion and of that 
patriotism which true religion inspires, a spirit that 
loves country not for self but for the country's sake. 



272 PATRIOTISM AND LIBERTY. 

I am most happy, here at least, to claim for the 
Union, as most heaYtily I do, our undivided allegi- 
ance. For there is no sacrifice too great to pay for 
the union of these States, unless we sacrifice that for 
which the Union was first made — Liberty. "We will 
suffer much for the sake of the Union — we will give 
up many sectional points of pride, but when we are 
asked to give tip the spirit which animated the men 
of the Revolution — the spirit of Liberty — that we can 
never give up. 

"We declare that any true- patriotism must be a 
patriotism which shall include in itself the knowledge 
and love of those principles well embodied in the 
Declaration of our Independence — the rights of man 
— the declaration that all men are born free and 
equal. Patriotism without that is not patriotism in 
America. It may be patriotism in Austria, but not 
in America. The patriotism that does not include 
within itself the doctrine that every man has inalien- 
able rights to life, liberty and property — the patriot- 
ism that leaves that out, is like a man without a 
heart or a head — a hollow corpse. 

We have had patriotism of all shapes and forms. 
Sometimes it goes up and down the country preach- 
ing Union and patriotism, but with everything of 
liberty left out. Our fathers embraced in their 
patriotism everything pertaining to sacred liberty, 
and by their sufferings and struggles they maintained 
their declaration. Our patriotism must be a patriot- 
ism that takes in Maine, and New Hampshire, and 
Vermont, and Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, and 
Connecticut, and New Jersey, and Ohio, and Penn- 



PATRIOTISM AND LIBERTY. 273 

sylvania, and Virginia, and Delaware, and Maryland, 
and North Carolina and even South Carolina. Yes, 
and Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and 
Arkansas, Tennessee and Kentucky, Ohio" and dear 
old Indiana, and Illinois, and Missouri, bound for 
freedom, and Minnesota and Wisconsin, and I know 
not how many besides. [A voice, u Kanas."] Yes, 
Kansas and California, and all the States, named 
and unnamed, that are and are yet to come. A 
patriotism it must be that shall take in every State 
that stands within the confederacy — a patriotism not 
for party broils, party spoils, squabbles, contention, 
wranglings and base ambitions; but a patriotism 
that shall give to every one of the States that very 
foundation laid by our revolutionary struggle — 
liberty, liberty, nothing else than liberty ! 

What are our Fourth-of-Julys from which these 
great truths are left out ? What is that patriotism 
which ignores, or daintily touches and passes by this 
greatest thought, this most noble heritage of civiliza- 
tion — liberty for every man? This is a patriotism 
which will save our great country. I am not an ill- 
omened prophet: I do not believe we shall go to 
wreck; I believe God built his temple on these 
shores. Although, like temples in other times, it may 
have been occasionally delayed and marred, in some 
parts at least, yet the temple is reared to Christ and 
to Liberty. I believe it will be perfected and God 
will preserve this nation by the instrumentality of 
your hearts, your hands, your heads, and by your 
fidelity to our original Revolutionary principles. But, 
amid broils and high conflicts, be sure that it is safe 



274: PATRIOTISM AND LIBERTY. 

to stand firmly upon the old truths. It is never safe 
to abandon our profession of faith in liberty. It is 
never safe to put this nation upon the shifting sands 
of expediency! And whatever storms arise, what- 
ever fierce winds blow, there is no other anchor for 
us but that goodly anchor of Liberty ! Never be 
ashamed of it. Speak it out, openly, boldly, sin- 
cerely, Tind let your life corroborate your words. 

Remember that discussion should ever be free. 
Let us remember the duty of toleration of men that 
differ in the extremest points from us. Let us accord 
to thejm. that right which we assert for ourselves — the 
right to believe what we will — the right to defend 
what we think — the right to express what we believe. 
Their rights and ours are the same, and if upon that 
common freedom Liberty cannot stand, let her go to 
the ground. I am not afraid to venture. Give -us 
freedom of speech and action, and this land will shake 
the dust of oppression from her garments and stand 
forth the virgin daughter of God, free, blessed and 
blessing ! 

I have been asked by those concerned in a benevo- 
lent movement to mention to you the ladies of 
America, who are now engaged in the work of pur- 
chasing the grounds and tomb of "Washington, at 
Mount Vernon ; and with this I shall fitly close. Is it 
fit that women should rise up in the perturbed state of 
the Union, and should everywhere, as they do, beg 
for peace and honorable conciliation. You will 
remember that when Christ had slept three days, and 
many thought the world was empty of him, that it 
was the women who went to the sepulchre, asking as 



PATRIOTISM AND LIBERTY. 275 

they went, who shall roll away the stone, and that, 
when they reached the tomb, the stone was rolled 
away, and an angel sat upon it. JSTow the women of 
America go to the tomb of Washington, and who will 
roll away the stone ? God grant that they may find 
the stone rolled away and the living spirit of Wash- 
ington, which is the spirit of liberty, sitting upon it, 
to hail, to cheer and to bless them. 



PURITY OF CHARACTER. 

Over the beauty of the plum and the apricot, there 
grows a bloom and beauty more exquisite than the 
fruit itself — a soft, delicate plush that overspreads 
its blushing cheek. Now, if you strike your hand 
over that, and it is once gone, it is gone forever ; for 
it nev^r grows but once. Take the flower that hangs 
in the morning, impearled with dew, arrayed as no 
queenly woman ever was arrayed with jewels. Once 
shake it, so that the beads roll off, and you may 
sprinkle water over it as carefully as you please, yet 
it can never be made again what it w r as when the 
dew fell silently upon it from heaven ! On a frosty 
morning, you may see the panes of glass covered 
with landscapes — mountains, lakes, trees, blended in 
a beautiful, fantastic picture. Now, lay your hand 
upon the glass, and by the scratch of your finger, or 
by the warmth of your palm, all the delicate tracery 
will be obliterated ! So there is in youth a beauty 
and purity of character, which, when once touched 
and defiled, can never be restored; a fringe more 
delicate than frost-work, and which, when torn and 
broken, will never be reembroidered. A man who 
has spotted and soiled his moral garments in youth, 
though he may seek to make them white again, can 
never wholly do it, even were he to wash them with his 
tears. When a young man leaves his father's house, 

276 



PURITY OF CHARACTER. 277 

with the blessing of liis mother's tears stili wet upon 
his forehead, if he once loses that early purity of 
character, it is a loss that he can never make whole 
again. Such is the consequence of crime. Its effect 
cannot be eradicated ; it can only be forgiven. It is 
a stain of blood that we can never make white, and 
which can be washed away only in the blood of 
Christ, that " cleanseth from all sin I" 



HOW TO BEAR LITTLE TROUBLES. 

There is a kind of narrowness into which, in our 
every-day experiences, we are apt to fall, and against 
which we should most carefully guard. When a man 
who is in perfect health has a wound inflicted upon 
him — a wound in his foot, a cut on his finger, a pain 
in his hand — he is almost always sure to feel, even 
though it be only a small member that suffers, and 
the suffering itself be unworthy of the name, that the 
perfect soundness of all the rest of his body counts as 
nothing ; and a little annoyance is magnified into a 
universal pain. Only a single point may be hurt, 
and yet he feels himself clothed with uneasiness, or 
with a garment of torture. So, God may send ten 
thousand mercies upon us, but if there happen to be 
only one discomfort among them, one little worry, or 
fret, or bicker, all the mercies and all the comforts 
are forgotten, and count as nothing! One little 
trouble is enough to set them all aside ! There may 
be an innumerable train of mercies which, if they 
were stopped one by one, and questioned, would 
seem like angels bearing God's gifts in their hands ! 
But we forget them all, in the remembrance of the 
most trivial inconvenience ! A man may go about 
all the day long — discontented, fretting, out of humor 
— who, at evening, on asking himself the question, 
" What has ailed me to-day ?" may be filled with 

278 



HOW TO BEAR LITTLE TROUBLES. 279 

shame because unable to tell! The annoyance is 
so small and slight that he cannot recognize it ; yet, 
its power over him is almost incredible. He is 
equally ashamed with the cause and the result. 

We may fall into such a state merely through indif- 
ference, and remain there simply because we have 
fallen into it, and make no effort to get out. "When 
a man starts wrong early in the morning, unless he is 
careful to set himself right before he has gone far, he 
will hardly be able to straighten out his crookedness 
until noon or afternoon — if haply then ; for a man 
is like a large ship ; he cannot turn round in a small 
space, and must make his sweep in a large curve. If 
we wake up with a heavenly mind, we are apt to 
carry it with us through the day ; but if we wake up 
with a fretful, peevish, discontented disposition, we 
are apt to carry that all the day, and all the next day 
too ! I have comforted myself, and risen out of this 
state of mind, by saying to myself, "Well, you are in 
trouble ; something has come upon you which is 
painful ; but will you let it clasp its arms around 
you, and shut you in its embrace from the sight and 
touch of all the many other things that are accounted 
joys? Will you suffer yourself to be harnessed and 
driven by it?" It is well to remember that there 
is a way of overcoming present troubles by a recog- 
nition of present or promised mercies. The apostle 
Paul knew this, and so exhorted us to " look unto 
Jesus, who, for the joy that was set before him, en- 
dured the cross, despising the shame." All that 
Christ had to bear he bore patiently — he carried his 
sorrow about with him as a very little thing. Why { 



280 HOW TO BEAR LITTLE TROUBLES. 

Because of the "joy that was set before him !" Oh ! 
let us apply the exhortation faithfully to ourselves ; 
and when we are worried, and tempted to give way 
to vexation, let us seek a sweet relief in the thought 
of the blessedness that is set before us to be an in- 
heritance forever ! 



" SIN KEVIVED AND I DIED." 

The apostle Paul says, "I was alive without the 
law once, but when the commandment came, sin 
revived and I died." A man walking in a beautiful 
field on a bright summer morning, when the sun is 
golden and makes everything it shines upon golden 
too, asks himself, " "What field is this ?" He thinks, 
" Perhaps this field, in the old Revolutionary struggle, 
was deluged with gore ; and perhaps there are now 
at the roots of these flowers, and of this grass, the 
very instruments of war that were used in the con- 
flict, and the bones of those who fell in wielding 
them." Suppose, as he walks, thus musing, and 
looking at the clouds and the sunlit face of Nature, 
all at once, in the places where he saw flowers and 
shrubs, there should be protruding bones ! — the gaunt 
bones of an arm, or of a hand! — or that a skull, 
ghastly and appalling, should break through, and 
that all the hideous carcasses of the men who fought 
and died in the old battle should begin to stir them- 
selves in every part of the field, with terror in their 
forms and figures, and greater terror still in their 
movements, and that they should utter again the 
shriek of war, horrible and sepulchral ! This would 
be like unto that which the apostle saw, and w\hich 
he meant when he wrote these words. They are as 
though he had said, " I was alive once without the 

281 



282 

law ; and all at once God touched me by his living 
commandment. Sin revived, and all the corruption 
of my old transgressions, all the ghastly remembran- 
ces of my old folly and iniquity, all my former 
deficiencies, all my pride and vanity, all my self- 
righteousness, all my lusts, all that was wicked in me, 
suddenly rose up in baleful resurrection before my 
eyes, and I fell stricken to the ground with horror 
at the sight !" This is not the experience of Paul 
only; it has been repeated more or less vividly in 
the lives of thousands and thousands of persons, from 
that day to this ; for men, while they are proud, and 
vain, and ignorant, are contented with their own con- 
dition, and conceited in their own favor ; but when 
the revealing touch of God's Spirit is felt within them, 
and they see and understand the law of God, " Sin 
revives and they die !" Things change with the 
rule by which they are measured. A low moral 
standard will content men with conduct and motives, 
which, in the light of a higher law, would seem 
detestable. Human conduct, which, judged by cus- 
tom and unenlightened human opinion, seems guilt- 
less, when measured by the law of a pure and holy 
God, appears full of guilt. And no man has judged 
rightly of either his character or his conduct, until 
he has held them up in the light of God's counte- 
nance and measured them by God's law. 



I 



HUMILITY BEFOEE GOD. 

I think that a view of what we are before God, o£ 
our leanness, of our littleness, of our weakness and 
imperfection, is enough to keep down the risings of 
any man's pride. There are times when, if a 
man should receive a full, clear view of what he is 
himself, in comparison with what God is, all hope 
and almost life itself would be crushed out of him ! 
And it is only when God reveals himself in the 
person of Jesus Christ, pardoning sins, and over- 
looking our errors and imperfections, that we are 
enabled to have hope ! But while, in the view of 
God, every Christian feels that he is not only sinful, 
but ignominiously so, and degraded beyond all ex- 
pression, yet there is in his experience of the love 
which Christ has for him, notwithstanding his weak- 
ness and impurity, a certain boldness that lifts him 
up and gives him confidence to stand in the very 
presence of God ! 

Did you ever see a child, which through a period 
of days and weeks had little by little been gathering 
mischief and disobedience, and seeming to be aching 
for a whipping ? By and by he comes to a state in 
which it is plain that there must be an outbreak; 
and an occasion occurs, perhaps, from some trifling 
circumstance, in which he is brought to a direct issue 
with the parent, and the question is, who shall conquer, 
the mother or the child? She expostulates, but the 

283 



284 



HUMILITY BEFORE GOD. 



child grows red and swells witli anger; she pleads w r ith 
him, and uses all her power to bring him to a recon- 
ciliation on the basis of justice ; but nothing w y ill do ; 
and at last, when everything else has failed, and 
she has been unable by gentle means to subdue his 
haughty pride — if she does what she ought to do, she 
gives him a sound whipping ! He is quickly subdued, 
and filled with shame, yet not entirely humbled ; but 
when he sees the much-loving mother, who has wept 
with even more pain and suffering than the child 
himself, going about the room — a kind of living 
music to the child's unconscious feeling ! — taking her 
seat at last in some window-nook, with sorrow upon 
her face, he comes to himself, and, thinking a 
moment, feels that all the old dark flood of ugliness 
has gone away, and an entirely new feeling begins to 
take possession of him. He looks at the face of the 
mother, with love swelling in his heart, and wishes 
that he were sitting at her feet. And when she says, 
"My child, why do you not come to me?" — with 
another burst of tears, not of pain and wounded 
feeling, but of joy and love — he throws himself into 
her arms, and buries his head in her bosom ! Ah ! if 
I remember aright, I can recount many similar expe- 
riences in my own early life ; and I am brought back 
into the remembrance of such childhood's scenes, be- 
cause the relation of my own disobedient heart to my 
mother when she punished me, is the best illustration 
which I can give you of the relation of the soul of a 
rebelling child of God to his chastising hand! 
When after being puffed up with pride and vanity, 
from being engaged in worldly pursuits, and being 



HUMILITY BEFORE GOD. 285 

contented with mere worldly moralities, I am sud- 
denly, by afflictions or disappointments, or by the 
direct visitation of God's Holy Spirit, humbled and 
brought to the very earth with contrition ; oh ! who 
can tell how sweet it is to take hold of the outreaching 
hand of the Lord Jesus Christ, and go up into the 
confidence and embrace of his love ! I am nothing 
myself: I am entirely humbled and subdued ; only I 
feel his love in my heart, and my heart swells w T ith 
love in return. These are days of sweetness! 
These are days of heavenly joy! These are days of 
true humility ! Oh ! how lowly a man bows, and how 
lowly he walks, who has a view of his own littleness 
and emptiness in comparison with the greatness and 
the fullness of the ever-living and ever-loving God ! 



WHO SHALL HELP THE UNFORTUNATE ? 

The importunities of various want at our door, 
remind us that the summer is gone and winter is 
coming. "Work and wages are growing less and 
less; expense is growing daily more and more. 
Besides, in the change from season to season, sick- 
ness revels. Winter takes away from thousands the 
little strength they had. Colds, consumptions, in 
their endless varieties and stages, are plucking away 
health, energy and hope, and preparing the bosom 
for the last and deadly stroke of Time. 

Who help the needy? Not misers or stingy 
men. They regard poverty as a crime ; importunity 
is worse than an insult. They button up their hearts 
against solicitation, and doggedly say, " No, I will 
not," or drive off the beseeching face with bitter 
advice, " Go, work, sir ! I have to work for my liv- 
ing — you must work for yours." 

" Oh, sir, I should be glad to work : will you give 
me work to do ?" 

" Give you work ? Do you suppose I have nothing 
else to do but run about hunting work for such vaga- 
bonds as you ? Haven't you got legs, and a tongue in 
your head ? Why don't you get your own work '?" 

Sometimes these men are just as bad as they seem, 
just as heartless, selfish, and cruel. Sometimes they 



WHO SHALL HELP THE UNFORTUNATE? 287 

are very kind men in tlieir families, and to their re- 
latives. But they think that no one ought to be poor 
in this country, and that if they are, it must be from 
negligence, or indolence, or spendthrift vice ; and so 
a poor beggar is presumptively a knave, who thinks 
that he can deceive you ; and the man blusters 
fiercely at him, in part to let him know that he can- 
not dupe him. 

Next, are those whose kindness depends upon their 
mood. Slamming the door in everybody's face to-day, 
and profuse and indiscriminate in kindness to-morrow. 
Their charity is a mere firing into the air, a feu de 
joie y they do not aim at a mark, or take sight at all. 

There are some whose hearts are so tender that they 
never refuse until nothing is left to give. We cannot 
help loving such amiable fellows, whose hearts flow 
down with generous elements. But they are the god- 
fathers of swindlers. They encourage and breed a 
race of beggars who feed unworthily upon the bread 
which belongs to the modest poor. 

Then come a large class of men who are excellent 
citizens and exemplary Christians; but who have 
never really studied their personal duties toward the 
unfortunate. Some think that they are doing their 
part toward society by the energetic and successful 
conduct of their business ; some contribute to charity 
by aiding various charitable institutions, asylums, 
hospitals, etc. ; others throw into the plate a five dol- 
lar bill when the collection for the poor is taken up in 
church ; or they send round a sum to their minister 
asking him to distribute it ; or they subscribe to the 
City Relief Society, and so on. 



288 WHO SHALL HELP THE UNFORTUNATE? 

All of the last-mentioned persons would unite in 
saying, We are willing to give our money, but we 
cannot give our time and attention to the poor. 

There is a division of labor possible in the relief of 
the poor and the unfortunate. There ought to be 
men who should make it their business; there are 
others whose dispositions and whose circumstances 
qualify them to visit the abodes of misery and dwell 
much with the unfortunate; but there are others 
whom business so much absorbs as to make much 
personal attention impossible. 

But after every allowance has been charitably 
made, we are every year more and more satisfied 
that no man can afford to dispense entirely with per- 
sonal service toward the unfortunate. The moral 
education involved in Christian charity, is not 
gained by a mere donation of money, no matter how 
generous, or how often repeated. Our hearts need 
the discipline of sympathy with the poor and the 
afflicted, just as much as their hearts do. We need 
to put ourselves in the places of needy men, to hear 
their sorrows until they come home like our own ; to 
look at life through their experience, to study their 
wants, and to exercise patience, forbearance and 
gentleness while dealing with their misfortunes, or 
full as often, with their faults. And no man can tell 
the fullness of blessing which God means for him, 
when he sends to him misfortunes which he adopts as 
his own, and studies to relieve. It was the revela- 
tion of God's nature, indeed, when it was said of 
Christ that he bore our griefs and carried our sor- 



WHO SHALL HELP THE UNFORTUNATE ? 289 

rows. If Christ dwell in any heart, this will be one 
of the first and most unmistakable evidences of it. 

Now, the men who plead occupation, unfitness, 
etc., as a reason for not giving time and personal 
attention to the poor, are the very men who most 
need the discipline of such a course. They are in 
prosperity and need something to temper it ; they are 
absorbed by their own cares, which seem to them 
heavier than anybody else's and sharper. They need 
to have their burdens lightened by knowing that 
their cares are often trifling in comparison with 
others.' A man who is steadily going up in the world 
cannot afford to lose sympathetic acquaintance with 
men that are steadily going down. Our softness of 
ease, our luxuries, our scope and power of wealth, 
are as deadly enemies as can intrench the heart, 
unless we extract the quality of selfishness from them. 

The change from kindness to selfishness is very 
insidious. Few men are aware of what is going on 
in them as they rise in life. Others see it. It passes 
into remark among those who know them. But few 
men have friends who are friends, that dare tell 
them their faults. There are very few who will tell a 
man, "You are growing m\ich more imperious than 
you used to be ; you are more difficult to approach ; 
you carry yourself as if you felt your importance in 
the world." There are not many friends that will 
risk their peace by saying to a man, " You are more 
ostentatious, but less generous than you used to be. 
You may give away more money, but you show less 
sympathy and kindness. You are more worldly. 
You are growing very selfish ; and you spend twenty 
13 



290 WHO SHALL HELP THE UNFORTUNATE ? 

times as much upon yourself for the sake of effect, as 
you used to do ten years ago." 

But all prosperous men need faithful friends. 
" Open rebuke is better than secret love. Faithful 
are the wounds of a friend." There are enough that 
will flatter those who love to be flattered, and 
enough that will criticise, and enough that will be 
silent, and sorrowful. But there are few that will 
tell a man the very things which it most concerns 
him t$ know. 

But if a man employs his prosperity as a garner, in 
which are gathered the seeds of other men's advan- 
tage ; if when he is lifted up he will often let himself 
down among those who are struggling ; if he will 
oblige his heart to go out of its own courses, to enter 
upon the story of other hearts, to think, feel, plan, and 
achieve for them, he will rob prosperity of its sharp- 
est danger, and put himself into that very school 
where God teaches us how to be like Christ — a school 
in which our Master was once himself a scholar, for 
" though he was a son, yet learned he obedience by 
the things which he suffered; and being made per- 
fect he became the author of eternal salvation unto 
all them that obey him." 



PLYMOUTH CHURCH. 

We give place to a communication upon the pew- 
renting in Plymouth church. We have seen several 
like comments in print : 

" It was with pain that we saw in the papers that the pews in the 
Plymouth church had been rented for about $25,000. Is this the 
way to fulfill the command of our Saviour, to make his Gospel known 
to every creature ? Who are the men that have bid off the pews at a 
great premium, to the exclusion of 500 church-members, and many 
others, who desired the benefits of the pastor's labors? Are they 
such as most need his instruction? or do they secure the best seats 
for their own personal gratification ? Ought not many of those to be 
laboring with feeble churches in unfavorable localities, under the be- 
lief that it is more in accordance with the spirit of Christianity to do 
good than to get good? We, who do not live in large cities, cannot 
believe that it is right or Christian for one congregation to expend 
$25,000 for themselves, while many feeble churches are struggling 
for existence, and many self-denying ministers must rely on faith for 
the supply of their daily bread." 

The writer asks, "Is this the way to fulfill the com- 
mand of our Saviour, to make his Gospel known to 
every creature ?" Well. Does our friend wish no 
more churches built ? The apostles built none. They 
never preached in a church in their lives. For hun- 
dreds of years, it is probable that preaching was mere 
exposition of Scripture ; and performed without regu- 
larity, from place to place, in houses, in public resorts, 
market-places, and wherever a crowd collected. 

291 



292 PLYMOUTH CHURCH. 

Buildings for the church were of later date than the 
apostolic era. And to undertake to regulate modern 
preaching by the exact imitation of apostolic practice, 
would be the stupidest striving after an absolute im- 
possibility. No exact form was prescribed for church 
organization, none for church order and government, 
none for public worship, and none for the external 
and material elements of church use. No doubt, 
much more attention should be given to the carrying 
of the truth to men who will not come to church. 
But is there to be no centre, no organization, no 
building, and no regular and formal stated preaching? 
And if so, is there or is there not to be a secular 
arrangement for maintaining such an institution? 
There is no one way of giving Christian truth to the 
people. It must include every feasible method. 
And central among them, and the fountain and 
motive power of all other ways, is the regular and 
organized church. Now, if the church is to buy 
land, build a house, buy coal for warming, gas for 
lighting, pay the sexton for caring for the property, 
and support the minister who is set for watch and 
teaching, then there must be money raised to do 
it. And a church, when it deals with material things, 
is subject to just the same commercial law as any 
other body. Buying and selling in a church are just 
the same as in a store. Both should be honest and 
equitable, and if they are, it is all sham to talk of the 
church being too sacred for worldly things. 

Whenever a church comes to that part of its busi- 
ness which is secular, and requires commercial wis- 
dom, then it must stand just like any other honest 



PLYMOUTH CHURCH. 293 

concern, subject to all the equitable laws of matter 
and money. The pews must be sold and taxed, or 
rented every year ; and this must be done publicly, 
that all may have a chance. And if the pews are 
not much sought after, there will be but little trouble 
or complaint. But if the pews are fewer than the 
applicants ; if ten men want seats when but one can 
be accommodated, how are we to select which shall 
have them ? 

Shall there be a perpetual scramble?* Then the 
strongest will get them. Shall they be rented pri- 
vately ? Then the alert and shrewd will get them. 
Shall they be rented openly and in fair competition ? 
Then, inevitably, they must follow the commercial 
law, and the man who wants them most, and has the 
means of paying the most, must have them. 

Now, it is very easy to stand off and rail. Will 
any one suggest a plan by which 5,000 men can be 
put into a church that will hold but 3,000 ? If only 
a part are to be accommodated, will some one tell a 
better method than open competition upon fair com- 
mercial principles? For the secular affairs of a 
church are just as commercial, and just as subject to 
right commercial laws, as is the business of a bank, 
a manufactory, an academy or college. 

It has been proposed to let the church-members 
have a chance first, and then give the world what 
remains ! This is eminently and exquisitely evan- 
gelical ! Let Christians take care of themselves first, 
and then give sinners the crumbs! Let converted 
souls become insiders, and have a first chance at the 
feast, and sit with a preemption right, around the 



294 PLYMOUTH CHURCH. 

Gospel luxuries ; and when they are sated, let the 
outside sinners gnaw the bones ! If a church after 
ten years' preaching has got along only so far as to 
be individually and corporately selfish, it might have 
done that without the trouble and expense of preach- 
ing and organizing. Selfishness thrives very w T ell 
without means of grace to help it ! 

It is thought by some, and by our correspondent, 
we presume, that the poor should be first provided 
for. The poor should be held in lively remembrance. 
Every church ought to keep Christ's feelings for the 
poor and ignorant burning in the heart and sanctuary, 
like a fire that never goes out. 

But ought we to provide for the poor in a way that 
shall punish those who are not poor? Are we to 
exclude men from churches, whose industry, patience 
and frugality, have made them affluent ? Shall such 
a practice of Christian virtues in worldly matters as 
rewards men with worldly substance, work their ex- 
clusion ? A man ought not to be punished for being 
legitimately prosperous ! 

But our correspondent says : " Who are the men 
that have bid off the pews at a great premium, to 
the exclusion of 500 church-members and many 
others,' who desired the benefits of the pastor's 
labors?" 

"We will tell him who they are. They are men who 
have souls to be saved or lost. They are men, who, 
if rich, need preaching all the more because^ they are 
rich. They are men who have families just as dear 
to them as if they were poor. They are men with 
little boys and girls, with sons and daughters, under 



PLYMOUTH CHURCH. 295 

temptation and needing guidance. They are men 
who are peculiarly liable to self-indulgence, to selfish 
luxury, to pride and hardness of heart, and who re- 
quire all the aid of faithful preaching to incline them 
to humility, generosity, and benevolence ! The poor 
need the Gospel for reasons peculiar to their condi- 
tion, and the rich just as much for reasons peculiar to 
their estate. 

But, in the particular case in hand, those who have 
bid off pews at high premiums, are men, many of 
them, who, when we took this pastorate were just 
beginning a business life, and have grown up to ripe 
manhood side by side with us. They are, many of 
them, those whom we married, whose children we 
baptized, or whose hearts we comforted in the hour 
in which, over small open graves, they strove to write 
in their hearts, " Thy will be done," but found that 
tears washed out the letters as fast as they were writ- 
ten. They are the very persons, in a great number 
of cases, who, under our teaching, have beheld a 
great light, and have learned to say, " Our Father," 
to God, with their whole heart ! 

It is very easy for men " who do not live in large 
cities to believe that it is right or Christian for one 
congregation to expend $25,000 for themselves, etc." 
If men that have money knew what to do with it 
half as well as those do, who give them advice with- 
out knowing anything about their affairs, what a 
thrifty world this would be ! "What a church spends 
annually is great or little, according to circumstances. 
There are many country churches where $2,500 a year 
would be more extravagant than in others would be 



296 PLYMOUTH CHURCH. 

$25,000. But in this particular case the surplus 
funds are employed in paying off the debts and 
mortgages which lie upon the property, and we hope 
that it is not unchristian for a church to pay its honest 
debts ! 

And, in closing, we will only say, that, from the 
beginning, no church ever more conscientiously 
endeavored to give the Gospel to all classes, rich or 
poor, resident or strangers. For ten years the mem- 
bers of this society have cheerfully submitted to an 
inconveriience for the sake of the poor and of 
strangers, such as has rarely had a parallel. Gentle- 
men have paid hundreds of dollars for pews, which 
were, with the exception of a single Sabbath in the 
year, more or less filled with the poor. Hundreds of 
men have been very cheerfully excluded Sabbath 
after Sabbath from their pews, for the sake of accom- 
modating strangers. Every Sabbath day, families 
who have paid hundreds of dollars for a pew, com- 
ing to church, find it preoccupied by the poor and the 
stranger, and it is the rare exception that, in such a 
case, there is any irritation. Generally, the owner 
distributes his family as best he can, takes a seat in 
the aisles, or stands up in the entry. And this is not 
an occasional thing. It is the regular experience of 
the congregation, year after year. And we submit 
to all who think as our friend above writes, whether 
the endeavor of a large Christian church to conduct 
themselves hospitably, kindly, charitably, to all ranks 
and conditions of men rich or poor, black or white, 
bond or free, and who pay large sums for the conve- 
nience of welcome strangers, and of their neighbors 



PLYMOUTH CHURCH. 297 

not less welcome, ought to be rewarded with repre- 
sentations which, lead the public to think that Ply- 
mouth church is a bazaar of pews, bought and sold 
by selfish, speculating, rich men ! 



13* 



ORGAN-PLAYING. 

The Organ, long expected, has arrived, been un- 
packed, set up, and gloried over. The great players 
of the region round about, or of distant celebrity, 
have h&d the grand organ exhibition ; and this mag- 
nificent instrument has been put through all its paces, 
in a manner which has surprised every one, and, if it 
had had a conscious existence, must have surprised 
the organ itself most of all. It has piped, fluted, 
trumpeted, brayed, thundered ; it has played so loud 
that everybody was deafened, and so soft that nobody 
could hear. The pedals played for thunder, the flutes 
languished and coquetted, and the swell died away in 
delicious suffocation, like one singing a sweet song 
under the bedclothes. Now it leads down a stupen- 
dous waltz with full bass, sounding very much as if, 
in summer, a thunder-storm should play above our 
heads, " Come, haste to the wedding," or " Money- 
Musk." Then come marches, gallops, and hornpipes. 
An organ playing hornpipes ought to have elephants 
for dancers. 

At length a fugue is to show the whole scope and 
power of the instrument. The theme, like a cautious 
rat, peeps out to see if the coast is clear ; and after a 
few hesitations, comes forth and begins to frisk a lit- 
tle, and run up and down to see what it can find. It 

298 



ORGAN-PLAYING. 299 

finds just what it did not want, a purring tenor lying 
in ambush and waiting for a spring, and as the theme 
comes incautiously near, the savage cat of a tenor 
pitches at it, misses its hold, and then takes after it 
with terrible earnestness. But the tenor has miscalcu- 
lated the agility of the theme. All that it could do, 
with the most desperate effort, was to keep the theme 
from running back into its hole again, and so they ran 
up and down, around and around, dodging, eluding, 
whipping in and out of every corner and nook, till 
the whole organ was aroused, and the bass began to 
take part, but unluckily slipped and rolled down 
stairs, and lay at the bottom raving and growling in 
the most awful manner, and nothing could appease 
it. Sometimes the theme was caught by one part, 
and dandled for a moment, when, with a snatch, 
another part took it and ran off exultant, until una- 
wares the same trick was played on it, and finally, all 
the parts being greatly exercised in mind, began to 
chase each other promiscuously in and out, up and down, 
now separating and now rushing in full tilt together, 
until everything in the organ loses patience, and all 
the " stops " are drawn, and, in spite of all that the 
brave organist could do — who flew about and bobbed 
up and down, feet, hands, head, and all — the tune 
broke up into a real row, and every part was clubbing 
every other one, until at length, patience being no 
longer a virtue, the organist with two or three terri- 
fic crashes put an end to the riot, and brought the 
great organ back to silence ! 

Then came congratulations. The organist shook 
hands with the builder, and the builder shook hands 



300 ORGAN-FLAYING. 

with the organist, and both of them shook hands with 
the committee ; and the young men who thought it 
their duty to know something about music looked 
wise, and the young ladies looked wise too, and the 
minister looked silly, and the parishioners generally 
looked stupid, and all agreed that there never was 
such an organ — no, never. And the builder assured 
the committee that he had done a little more than the 
contract stipulated ; for he was very anxious to have 
a good organ in that church ! And the wise men of 
the committee talked significantly of what a treasure 
they had got. The sexton gave a second look at the 
furnace, lest the church should take it into its head, 
now, of all times, to burn up ; and he gave the key 
an extra twist in the lock, lest some thief should run 
off with the organ. 

And now, who shall play the organ ? is the ques- 
tion. And in the end, who has not played it? First 
perhaps, a lady who teaches music is exalted to the 
responsibility. Her taste is cultivated, her nerves 
are fine, her muscles feeble, her courage small, and 
her fear great. She touches the great organ as if she 
were a trembling worshipper, fearing to arouse some 
terrible deity. All the meek stops are used, but none 
of the terrible ones, and the great instrument is made 
to walk in velvet slippers every Sabbath, and after 
each stanza the organ humbly repeats the last strain 
in the tune. The instrument is quite subdued. It 
is the modern exemplification of Ariadne riding 
safely on a tamed leopard. But few women have 
strength for the mechanical labor. It ought not to 
be so. "Women ought to have better health, more 



i 



ORGAN-rL AYING . 301 

muscle, more power, and, one of these days, doubt- 
less, will have. 

Next, an amateur player is procured, w T ho was said 
to have exquisite taste and finished execution. A 
few pieces for the organ he knew by heart, a pretty 
way of varying a theme, a sentimental feeling, and 
reasonable correctness in accompaniment. 

Next came an Organist, who believed that all this 
small playing, this petty sweetness, was a disgrace to 
the powers of the instrument. He meant to lead 
forth the long pent-up force, and accordingly he took 
for his first theme, apparently, the Deluge, and the 
audience had it poured upon them in every conceiv- 
able form — wind, rain, floods, thunder, lightning, 
with all the promiscuous stops, which are put in all 
large organs to produce a screeching brilliancy, full 
drawn, to signify universal misery and to produce it. 
That man gave the church their full money's worth. 
He flooded the house. The voices of the choir were 
like birds chirping in a thunder-storm. He had 
heard that the singing of a congregation should be 
borne up upon the music of the organ and as it were 
floated, and he seemed to be aiming, for the most 
part, to provide a full Atlantic ocean for the slender 
choir to make its stormy voyages upon. 

A fortunate quarrel disposed of him, and the 
Organ went back to the tender performer. But be- 
fore long a w T onderful man was called, whose fame, 
as he related it, was excessive. He could do any- 
thing — play anything. If one style did not suit, just 
give him a hint, and he would take on another. He 
could give you opera, ecclesiastical music, stately 



302 ORGAN-PLAYING. 

symphony of Beethoven, the brilliant fripperies of 
Verdi, the solemn and simple grandeur of Handel, 
or the last waltz, the most popular song (suitably 
converted for the purpose) — anything, in short. The 
church must surely be hard to please, if he could not 
suit them. He opened his organ as a peddler opens 
his tin boxes, and displaying all its wares, says, Now, 
what do you want ? Here is a little of almost every- 
thing ! 

He took his turn. Then came a young man of a 
true and deep nature, to whom music w T as simply a 
symbol of something higher, a language which in 
itself is but little, but a glorious thing when laden 
with the sentiments and thoughts of a great heart. 
But he was not a Christian man, and the organ was 
not to him a Christian instrument, but simply a 
grand gothic instrument, to be studied, just as a 
Protestant would study a cathedral, in the mere spirit 
of architecture, and not at all in sympathy with its 
religious significance or uses. And before long he 
went abroad to perfect himself in his musical studies. 
But not till a most ludicrous event befell him. On 
a Christmas day a great performance was to be 
given. The church was full. All were musically 
expectant. It had been given out that something 
might be expected. And surely something was had 
a little more than was expected. For, when every 
stop was drawn, that the opening might be with a 
sublime choral effect, the down-pressing of his hands 
brought forth not only the full expected chord, but 
also a cat, that by some strange chance had got into 
the organ. She went up over the top as if gun- 



ORGA^-PLAYING. 303 

powder had helped her. Down she plunged into the 
choir, took the track around the front bulwark of the 
gallery, until opposite the pulpit, whence she dashed 
down one of the supporting columns,-made for the 
broad aisle, where a little dog joined in the affray, 
and both went down toward the street door at an 
astonishing pace. Our organist, who, on the first 
appearance of this element in his piece, snatched 
back his hands, had forgotten to relax his muscles, 
and was to be seen following the cat with his eyes, 
with his head turned, while his astonished hands 
stood straight out before him, rigid as marble ! 

But in all these vicissitudes, and in all this long 
series of players, good playing has been the acci- 
dent, while the thing meant and attempted has been, 
in the main, a perversion of music, a breaking of the 
Sabbath day, and a religious nuisance. The only 
alleviation in the case was, that the general ignorance 
of the proper function of church-music saved the 
Christian congregation from feeling what an outrage 
they had suffered. But, we must try this topic once 
more, before we can get it fairly finished. 



HOW TO BECOME A CHRISTIAN* 

There cannot be too much effort made to bring 
before 'the minds of men the truths of Christ. But, 
when men are made attentive to them, it seems to 
me, that they should be made to feel the obligation 
to obey Christ, without so much urging, conversation, 
and persuasive labor. Among uneducated heathen, 
it would be different ; but in a Christian country, 
where you have literally known almost nothing else 
than the truths of the Gospel, presented not alone 
in the didactic and logical form, but presented 
evermore in that most blessed form in which the true 
Gospel is preached, namely, in the example of a 
praying father, a praying mother, a praying brother 
or sister, a consistent friend, wife or child, nothing 
more ought to be required. How men that have 
been taught in the household and in the church, 
by example as well as by precept, should fall into 
the mistake of supposing that whenever they begin 
to be inquirers they need then to go through 
another and special course of training, I cannot un- 
derstand. I do not think that there is an intelligent 

* An Address delivered at a religious meeting in Burton's Old 
Theatre. 

804 



HOW TO BECOME A CHRISTIAN. 305 

man in this congregation that is not abundantly quali- 
fied to-day, before the sun goe s down, to become a 
true Christian in the spiritual and experimental sense 
of the term. 

More than that. Unless there has been some kind 
of an official touch, a man's conversion is scarcely 
thought to be complete ; unless some appointed class- 
leader, some elder, some deacon, above all, some 
minister, some eminent minister, has talked with him, 
explained it to him, upheld him in this hour, encour- 
aged his hope and brought him clear out, he does not 
feel as though he were right. Whatever may be the 
hope he enjoys, there is still the impression that 
the work of grace requires the interposition of some 
official instruction. 

I wish you to be rid of this. A man who knows 
enough to take care of his business, to live obediently 
to the laws of the land, to live in the affections of the 
family, knows enough to begin a Christian life. 
Religion and religious doctrines are very different 
things. We do not ask you to accept a theory of 
religious doctrine; nor any system of philosophy. 
We ask you simply to begin a religious life and to 
begin it now. 

Are you willing to be a Christian? Are you 
willing from this hour to hold your disposition, your 
life-powers, and all your business, under the control 
of Christ? Will you go to school to Christ and 
become a scholar, for the sake of learning how to live 
aright ? For, if you will, then you are a disciple of 
Christ. Disciple means scholar. A Christian is 
nothing but a sinful man who has put himself to 



306 HOW TO BECOME A CHRISTIAN. 

school to Christ for the honest purpose of becoming 
better. 

It is not needful that you should have a great deal 
of feeling. Willingness to obey the will of Christ 
as fast as it is made known to you is better than feel- 
ing. It is not necessary for you to go through such 
a period of conviction of sin, as some men have. If 
you see the evil of your sinful life enough to wish to 
forsake it, that is repentance enough to begin with. 
Repentance is good for nothing except to turn away 
a man from evil, and you need not wait for any more 
than will suffice for that. The less feeling there is 
required to effect a moral revolution the better. 

I would not have you wait for ministers, or for 
Christians. You can be a Christian without help 
from either. They will gladly help you. But you 
ought not to lean on them. Go to your own work at 
once. It is a question between your soul and God. 
Will you acknowledge God as your Father ? Will 
you, from this hour, make it your business to con- 
duct your whole life in accordance with God's will 
revealed in the Gospel of Christ ? 

You may become a Christian now, and go home to 
your household, and be enabled to ask a blessing at 
your table to-day ; you may stretch forth your hands, 
to the amazement of your wife and children, and, 
like a Christian man, ask a blessing upon your dinner, 
though it may be the first time in your life ; you 
may go home to night and begin family prayers 
where the sound of your voice in prayer has never 
been heard. I urge you to take that course, and to 
take it at oi\ce. 



HOW TO BECOME A CHRISTIAN. 307 

The word of God requires us so love the Lord our 
God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all 
our mind, and our neighbor as ourself. 

Will you deliberately undertake to begin your life 
over again, from this hour, under this law ? Will 
you undertake to regard things as right or wrong, as 
they agree or disagree with that rule? Will you 
acknowledge yourself bound, henceforth, to act under 
that charter ? 

" Can I, then, do this by mere volition ?" Can you 
any more go down to the Battery by volition ? and 
yet you know that volition will produce that result. 
For a proper volition always implies, not alone a 
choice of a thing, but also all the steps needed to 
accomplish this end. To determine thkt you will be 
warm, implies kindling a fire, or putting on clothing, 
or better yet, active exercise. You cannot be rich 
by wishing, but by choosing you can ; for choosing 
a thing always implies that you choose the appro- 
priate means of obtaining it. And so every man 
may come into that state of love and benevolence 
required by Christ, if he will employ the word of God, 
prayer as the inspiration and daily practice in ordi- 
nary conduct, as the means. 

" But can I suddenly, in a moment, reconstruct my 
character, change my conduct, alter my relations to 
tilings that are wrong, and be a thorough Christian in 
a moment ?" No ; you cannot be a perfect Christ- 
ian in a moment, but you can begin to be an imper- 
fect Christian in a moment. A man cannot make a 
journey in an instant, but he can begin instantly. 
A man cannot cleanse his hands in a moment, but he 



308 HOW TO BECOME A CHRISTIAN. 

can begin to wash. A man cannot reclaim a piece 
of land in an hour, but he can begin the work, with 
the determination to perform the whole. The prodi- 
gal son could not go back to his father at one step, 
but he could determine to perform the whole journey, 
and take the first step, and the next, and the next, 
perseveringly, and in right good earnest. Thus, to be 
a Christian is to enter upon a life which has its im- 
perfect beginning, its rude development, its imper- 
fections and mistakes, its successive states of growth, 
its gradual attainments, and its full final perfection 
only in another world. 

" But, is it right to call myself a Christian, when I 
do not do everything that Christ commands?" If 
you mean to obey in everything, if you are pained 
when you fail, if you resist evil, and seek deliverance 
from it, Christ will prove to you the most lenient and 
gracious teacher that scholar ever had. A child is 
not expelled from school for one poor lesson, nor for 
much dullness, nor for heedlessness, nor for disobedi- 
ence, if the teacher knows that, on the whole, the 
child means to be a good scholar, if he confesses his 
faults and strives to amend. God brings up those 
who become his children with a great deal more 
patience, a great deal more forbearance, and tender- 
ness of love, than any mother exercises toward a diffi- 
cult and fractious child. No faults lead her to give 
him up, so long as there is hope that at length he 
will do better, and do well. And God is greater in 
love than any mother. 

And, if you will now accept this law of love, hold 
yourself bound by it, undertake to carry it out every 



HOW TO BECOME A CHRISTIAN. 309 

clay, not be discouraged by failures, persevere in spite 
of imperfections, you shall find in Christ such gra- 
ciousness, such a forbearing and forgiving nature, as 
you will never find in any man. 

The moment that you realize this goodness of 
Christ, his helpfulness to you, his lenient, forgiving, 
sympathizing spirit, then you know what faith in 
Christ means. It* such a Saviour attracts you and 
you strive all the more ardently, from love toward 
him, and trust in him, then you are a Christian : not 
a religious man merely, but a Christian. 

A man may worship through awe, or through a 
sense of duty, and I think there are hundreds of men 
in the churches who are only religious men, and not 
Christians. A man who feels toward God only awe 
or fear ; who obeys merely from a sense of duty ; who 
is under the dominion of conscience rather than of 
love, may be religious, but he is not a Christian. 
Such men live by conscience, they live by a bond, 
bound by fear. Their life is literally one of service ; 
they are fatally servants of God, t not in the sense in 
which the words are largely used in the Scriptures, 
meaning simply disciples of Christ, but they are most 
literally God's hired men, or worse — God's bondmen. 
Men must learn no longer merely to fear God, no 
longer to tremble as before the tyrannical master of a 
despotic government; but to come unto Him through 
Jesus Christ, and say, "Lord, I love thee, I trust thee, 
and I will serve thee because I love thee." 

Any man who knows enough to love his children, 

his father, mother, brother or sister, has theological 

, knowledge enough to know the Lord Jesus Christ. 

14 



310 HOW TO BECOME A CHRISTIAN. 

/ 

Now the question is this : Do you choose to do it ? 
If we were to put this question to any of you : Do 
you really choose to love the Lord Jesus Christ? I 
suppose every man of you would say, " I do." But 
stop, there is a great distinction between desiring a 
thing and choosing a thing ; a man may desire with- 
out choosing. Do you suppose there is a man in the 
Tombs who does not desire to be an honest man? 
But he does not choose to be ; there are other things 
which he desires more than that ; he desires money 
more than he does honesty ; he desires the means of 
debauchery and revelry more than he does honesty. 
Probably there is not a man given to his cups, in the 
city of New York, who, if you should ask him, "Do 
you not desire to become a reformed and temperate 
man ?" would not say, Yes. He desires it, but he 
does not choose it; there are other things that he 
desires more, and he chooses the things which he 
desires most. 

Ask a poor ragged vagabond, " Do you not desire 
riches ?" Of course, he says he does. But he does 
not choose it, and you cannot make him choose it ; 
he does desire to be rich, but he desires to be lazy 
much more than that — therefore he is a vagabond. 
A man desires to be a scholar, but he does not choose 
it, because he likes his leisure much better than appli- 
cation. You desire an article of merchandise which 
you see along the street ; but when^ you inquire the 
price, you will not take it because you desire the 
money more. Almost every man desires something 
which he does not choose. We are full of desires, 
but we only choose those things for the possession of 



HOW TO BECOME A CHRISTIAN. 311 

which we are willing to deny the solicitation of all 
antagonistic desires. That man w T ho is willing to fore- 
go everything that stands in the way of the object 
which he desires, that man only can be said to have 
chosen it. 

Now I put the question to yon, Do you desire the 
love of Christ ? Do you desire it more than you do 
your pleasures, more than ambition, more than selfish 
indulgences ? Are you willing to say before God, I 
desire it more than all things in the world ? If you 
do, I know not why you should not at once begin to 
be Christian. Tou are competent to choose your 
business ; you do not need to ask any lawyers, doc- 
tors or ministers in order to do that. You are com- 
petent to choose your own course of life ; you are 
competent to choose your own pleasures, and you 
never think of asking of others how to secure them. 
Why do you not stand upon your own power — or 
rather upon God's power, which works within yours 
— and become a Christian by your own volition, just 
as you become a lawyer, a physician, a merchant, a 
traveller, a scholar ? 

Why do you not take three minutes of this sove- 
reign power of choice, to become a Christian? A 
man perhaps will say, " I desire to make that choice 
to-day." What he ought to say is this: " I make the 
choice. I make it now, and forever. I do in the 
presence of Almighty God, with all my soul deter- 
mine, that I will, through the love of Christ, make 
his wish, the supreme law of my life within and 
without. Not only in my relation directly to God, 
but in all my conduct toward my fellow-men, I will 



312 HOW TO BECOME A CHKISTLAJ5T. 

be governed by the revealed wish and law of God. 
Trusting to his mercy for pardon in all things wherein 
I come short, and depending on him for strength, 
I will make my work his work, and try like Jesus 
to find my meat and drink in doing God's holy 
will." "Who of you can solemnly promise this before 
God ? Look at it all around and decide. "Who can 
say, not that he will not be imperfect in carrying it 
out, but who can say, "that is to be my idea of life, 
that is to be my model, after which I am this hour 
and henceforth forever to strive ?" Is there a man 
who can take that step ? But, you say, " a man may 
take that step, and may become by mere choice a 
Christian in that way ; but there is no love springs up 
— there is no grace in his heart or soul ; and how is he 
to have that peace, that joy, that rest, that we hear 
Christians talking about ? In other words, how is a 
man to have in his soul the sweet sense that his power 
is not in himself, but of Christ ?" I answer, the Lord 
will send that — but in his own way and time. Leave 
it to him. 

If feeling comes first, let it come. But do not wait 
for it. Move on. Follow your decision upon the 
path of d^ty, and you will by and by have all the 
feeling you need. Jesus Christ sits on the throne of 
the universe for the very purpose of giving sympathy 
and effectual help to every man who says, " Lord, I 
am needy; Lord, I am bestormed and out of my 
course, and I come to thee for sympathy and assis- 
tance." Upon that ground we are to look to Christ ; 
we have the power to choose him, and, if we do, we 
shall feel that mighty love, that conscious sympathy 



HOW TO BECOME A CHRISTIAN. 313 

and presence, that power of God upon the heart of 
every man, which shall give him peace and joy. If 
you doubt, come unto Christ and you shall know 
whether it does not make you blessed. This willing- 
ness on your part, this faith in Christ, is the element 
that shall bring you in the right direction, to a con- 
sciousness of peace in Jesus Christ. But the great 
trouble is, I think, that you do not wish to be Christ- 
ians so much as you wish other things. 

One of the most memorable things that took place 
last winter was the opening of a place as an eating- 
house, free to the hungry, in one of the streets of 
this city. The kind actor in this charity thought that 
he had no better way to use his money than to 
feed the hungry and the poor ; so he opened a room 
and made this declaration : u If any are hungry, here 
is food for them ; let them come and eat." Now, in 
the case of certain grades of men, there was no trouble 
about it. The man who was in the ditch, and so low 
that he knew that he was a miserable, degraded crea- 
ture, would scramble up quickly when he heard of 
this place ; run to it and betake himself to the food 
with almost indecent haste. And the man who had 
been dodgiog around from one expedient to another, 
till now he was nearly famished and did not know 
where to go to keep from starvation, hears that here 
there were great, bountiful rounds of beef and glo- 
rious loaves of bread, any quantity, indeed, of provis- 
ion, and away he runs to see if it was really so ; he 
would not talk much, or preach much, but he would 
practise a great deal ; for, let me tell you that your 
hungry men care very little for the theory of eating 

14 



314: HOW TO BECOME A CHRISTIAN. 

or digestion. It is the practice which they dote 
upon. 

But here comes a man who has been more respect- 
able : he has lived in genteel society and given dinner 
parties in his prosperous days ; the times have been 
rather hard upon him, but he expects that the spring 
will set him up all right again ; he has been home 
with everybody who asked him to eat, has been to 
everybody's house but his own, for there was nothing 
to eat there ; he has borrowed all the money he could, 
but now no one asks him to dine, and he can borrow 
no more. He has gone to bed hungry at night, and 
oh ! what dreams he has had out of that gnawing 
stomach; he wakes up in the morning and says to 
himself, "I wonder where I can get any breakfast?" 
He thinks to be sure of that dining-saloon just opened, 
where there is plenty of food to be had for nothing; 
but he says, " I cannot go down there, I cannot hum- 
ble myself so much ; I, who have been able, and in the 
habit of giving charity, to go down there and get my 
food, and become a beggar ? I can't do that !" So, 
he wanders about till noon, and though the hunger 
gnaws at his stomach, and he is faint and weary, 
he will not go in yet, so he wanders on till about sun- 
down. 

But at sun-down he says to himself— and hunger is 
an excellent logician— " After all, am I not acting 
foolishly ? I am so weak I can hardly stand, and it 
does seem to me that I cannot sleep to-night for the 
gnawings of hunger. Oh, how I want this food ; I 
think I will just go down the street." So away he 
goes, like a great many men who have come in here 



HOW TO BECOME A CHRISTIAN. 315 

to-day, saying that they just came in to see what was 
going on, but who know that down deep in their 
own hearts there is something else beside curiosity 
which they cannot resist. Well, away he goes down 
the street, and looks in to see who is there; then 
he watches to see if anybody is looking at him, or 
if anybody knows him ; he goes away and walks 
up the square, but he is reminded from within that 
he had better come back again. This time he walks 
right by the door, and looks in askance to see if any- 
body is in there ; he hears the cheerful noise of the 
i knives and forks, smells the wholesome food, hears 
I the laughter of joyful men, hungry men doing work 
, meet for hunger. Now, suppose that, as he stands 
j there, he should see, among those going down, the 
t butcher and baker loaded with great piles of meat 
J and bread, and should stop them to say: "I am 
almost dead with hunger, I have been invited here to 
take something to eat, but before I go down I should 
like to know the precise process by which flour is 
made into bread !" — just as men come to me, wishing 
me to explain to them the doctrines of justification, 
j sovereignty, atonement, and other things, when they 
i are dying for want of Christ's loving help ! So this 
man stops the baker to ask him how bread is made, 
but the butcher and the baker step in with their 
' load. 

He listens again to the cheerful music of the 

rattling dishes — and there is no such music to a 

1 hungry man's ear, and says, " I can't go in yet ; 1 

am not satisfied as to the way these things are made." 

So he walks away, but hunger gives him another 



316 HOW TO BECOME A CHRISTIAN. 

turn, and back he goes and looks in again, and says, 
" If it wasn't for — , if it wasn't for — ;" then he 
looks up the street to see if anybody is looking at 
him, and says, " I will just go down one step." He 
steps down, and the attraction is so great that he 
goes in ; nobody seems to know him, nobody seems 
surprised ; he reaches out his hand and takes hold of 
a dry crust, and the tears come into his eyes as he 
puts it into his mouth. Oh, how sweet it is ! "With 
that' he sits right down and makes a feast, and as he 
rises up again, he says to himself, " Oh, what a fool I 
was, that I did not come long before and often." Are 
there not just such fools in this congregation ? % Tou go 
up and down, to and fro, before Christ's table, when 
there is bread that will cause that hunger to cease 
forever, and water drawn from the river that comes 
from God's throne; and yet you have gone back, 
thinking what your wife would say, what your father 
would say, what your partner would say, what your 
gay companions would say. But you feel the gnaw- 
ings of hunger, and, as you look at the spread table, 
you say, " Oh, how we need this food, but we dare 
not come and take it." Oh ! it is shame, pride, or 
fear, that keeps you thus back. Oh, if there was only 
hunger enough to bring you to the right point, then, 
having once tasted, you would rise up from that 
feast, with the blessed assurance that yet once again 
you should sit down at a still nobler table, at the 
marriage supper of the Lamb ! 

Now, if there are any in this congregation that 
have seen the bounty spread forth in the love of 
Christ, which they can have "without money and 



HOW TO BECOME A CHRISTIAN. 317 

without price," as promised by Jesus Christ, do not 
let them wait for somebody to explain it any more. 
Try it yourselves to-day ! 

I am ashamed of myself, often, to be an ob- 
ject of more faith than my Saviour ; yet I have per- 
sons coming to me every day of my life, with their 
wants and troubles, instead of going to Christ. How 
eagerly they believe every statement I make; how 
they hang upon my sympathy, and hope I will let 
them come again to-morrow. I say to myself, if you 
would only come to Christ with half the faith that 
| brings you to me, you might be rejoicing in half an 
hour. Suppose now, that instead of a man sinful 
and erring like yourselves, you should put in my 
J place the august form of the Lord Jesus Christ, full 
1 of benignity, glorious with goodness, and with a 
I sweetness that is more than any mother ever knew 
, for her darling child, waiting patiently, bending over 
; you and saying, " Come unto me and take my yoke 
I upon you ;" " learn of me and ye shall find rest to 
I your souls," "for he that cometh unto me I will in 
j no wise cast out." Suppose you should hear Jesus 
, Christ saying, " I have been out to seek and search 
I for lost men, and I have found you, and I am per- 
; suading you to come to me ; believe me that I love 
j you, that I love you now." If there is a man that 
, has one thought toward God, it is because the love 
j of God is drawing him sympathetically to himself. 
, It is a blessed thought that Jesus Christ is longing 
I for you, and I would that you might turn still more 
' earnestly to Jesus Christ and say, " Lord, I believe 
j thee, I believe thou lovest me ; I believe thou desirest 



, l 



318 HOW TO BECOME A CHRISTIAN. 

to make me thine, and from this hour it shall be the 
object of my life to please thee, and the one firm 
object of my life to serve thee." Will you try the 
effect of that vow, some of you, to-day % Try it at 
once, even now, while I am speaking. 

I always feel most for those who are furthest from 
grace, perhaps because I see in them some likeness 
to myself. But my Master also had a special re- 
gard for such. One of the most touching things in 
the life of Christ, is the way in which the wretched 
lookfed at him. The literary, the philosophical, the 
rich, the great political men of that day did not thin 
much of Christ ; but he had such a sweet way o: 
carrying himself in all Jerusalem, that whenever he 
went into a house to sit down and rest, all the vaga- 
bonds and wretches came round about him, as though 
he was their patron. They felt " somebody cares 
for me ; somebody, instead of thumping me with a 
truncheon, instead of putting my hands in manacles, 
loves and cares for me." They did not know what 
to make of the quiet, gentle effect of the character of 
Christ ; and wherever he went all manner of wicked 
men poured round about him. Such was his sweet- 
ness that all the wretched and miserable came to see 
him ; such was the impression he made upon the 
lowest class in Jerusalem. "Why should we not all 
be like him ? 

Whenever I know of a man that nobody else prays 
for, it seems as if my heart would break for him. If 
I hear of a man that has broken away from all 
instruction, instead of saying, " he is a devil, I 
would much rather say he is my brother, and I 



HOW TO BECOME A CHRISTIAN. 319 

must heartily pray for him." "When I walk up 
Broadway, 'tis a pain to me to look up and down the 
street and see so many, with apparently nobody to 
care for their souls. Now, if there is in this house 
to-day any man who is wicked and degraded ; if there 
is any man who sells rum — and that makes about as 
bad a man as can be in this world — I don't say this 
to hurt your feelings, but because, as a servant of 
Christ, I must talk plainly to every man ; — if there is a 
man in this congregation that has gotten his living by 
stealing, from the most vulgar form of stealing up to 
the most respectable, genteel way in which so-called 
honest men steal, and call it financiering ; if there are 
any who live in any way discreditably in the eye of the 
world or in the eye of God ; any who make catering 
to lust or passion their means of livelihood ; if there 
are any who have stood upon these boards, not to 
instruct, but simply to amuse or degrade their fellow- 
men ; actors, managers, or any others — give me your 
hand, you are my brethren ! It is the "blood of Christ 
that makes you and me related, which is more pre- 
cious than the blood of your father or my father. 
My soul goes out for you ; and I long that you should 
know how Christ feels for you. Oh ! wandering 
sheep, be not ye lost ! Christ calls to you by my 
voice. He sends me here to say to some man who is 
on the point of decision, but who thinks it is of no 
use to try to be good any longer ; — drink, perhaps, 
may be taking you down ; or your passions are drag- 
ging you down, and you do not know how to resist 
the insidious pleasures which surround you ; or your 
companions are taking you down, and nobody, as 



320 HOW TO BECOME A CHRISTIAN. 

you think, cares for you — nobody prays for you or 
gives you instruction. Yes, there is one man who 
does — I care for you ; not out of my own nature, but 
because the spirit of my Master makes me thus care 
for your soul. He sent me to tell you that He — 
glorious as he is — that He cares for you ten thousand 
times more than I do. He loves you — He longs for 
you ; and there shall not be one man who makes one 
faint motion toward a better life whom He will 
not stand ready to receive. Pie shall send forth the 
angels, *saying unto them, "Take care of that man, 
and bear him up lest at any time he dash his foot 
against a stone." 

But, let me tell you, in this matter you must 
be in earnest; you must be thoroughly resolved. 
Prayers have this morning been asked in your hear- 
ing for a Christian woman who, at the peril of life, 
has fled from slavery. Now, I want to know if there 
is a man in this congregation who desires to get rid 
of his sins as much as this poor woman did to get rid 
of her slavery ? She was willing to put her life in 
her hand, and, for days, without food, without drink, 
to seek for liberty as for her very life. 

Is there a slave in this congregation 1 A slave to 
Satan or to his own passions ? Is there any who wants 
to escape as much as this poor woman did ? Who 
strikes for liberty in Jesus Christ? Who desires to 
say to-day, not about one habit, but of all bad habits, 
" I desire to reform — I will reform ?" It is easier to 
i eform all at once than it is to reform one thing at a 
time. If a man wishes to wash a spot, big as a 
penny, clean on a dirty hand, he will find it much 



HOW TO BECOME A CHRISTIAN. 321 

easier to wash the whole hand than that one spot. 
This gradual repentance is like a man who wants to 
be taken out from a burning building, but who says to 
those about him, " Now, don't take me out too sud- 
denly ; take me down first to a room where it is not 
quite so hot as it is here ; and then to another room, 
where there is still less heat, and so take me out gra- 
dually." Why, the man would be a cinder before 
you got him out ! A man who wants to reform should 
reform perpendicularly ! If you mean to quit drink- 
ing, quit it at once, and become a Christian? If you 
want to be an honest man, go to God ! Begin there. 
It is easier to reform any vice by becoming a Christ- 
ian at once, than to attempt it from a lower motive. 
Take upon you the highest bond of truth ! A man 
who tries to reform without the help of God, is like the 
man who tries to breathe without air. Now, is there 
any man here who seeks for reform ? — there is hope 
for you ; there is prayer for you ; and better than 
that, there is God for you — there is Christ for you ! 
I hope and desire that in consequence of these 
remarks, some man who has been bound in sin may 
be converted. Who shall it be ? Shall it be you ? 
Some of you whose friends have been laboring for 

yOU, SHALL IT NOT BE YOU? 



14* 



GOD'S WITNESS TO CHKISTIAtf FIDELITY. 
kepoktek's preliminary statement. 

[An occasion of unusual interest, and one which 
will be long memorable to those who witnessed it, 
was celebrated last Sunday morning in Plymouth 
Congregational Church, Brooklyn. The unusual re- 
ligious feeling which has been apparent in this con- 
gregation for some months past, has of late been com- 
ing to harvest, and the fruits are now being gathered. 
The prayer-meetings have long been crowded, and 
the weekly lectures transferred from the lecture-room 
to the main building, in consequence of the thronged 
attendance. This church, during its comparatively 
brief history of less than eleven years, has experi- 
enced several revivals of great power and long con- 
tinuance ; but never one of greater extent or more 
gratifying character than the present. The first indi- 
cations of unusual seriousness in the congregation 
were observed about the time of the beginning of the 
General Awakening, last fall; and the feeling has 
since been continually increasing, without any present 
token of decline. The great audiences attending the 
Sabbath services have given evidence of deep serious- 
ness, and the successive occasions of public worship 
have steadily grown more and more solemn and 
impressive. For two months past, at the close of the 
evening sermons, the pastor has regularly invited the 

322 



god's witness to christian fidelity. 323 

unconverted persons in the congregation who desired 
prayers in their behalf, to rise in their seats, and thus 
to make that public commitment of themselves which 
has so often been found to be the beginning act of 
conversion. 

Since the communion in March (when a very large 
accession was made to the church) up to last Sabbath, 
which was the next following communion season, one 
hundred and ninety persons presented themselves for 
admission ; of which number one hundred and sixty- 
five were to make a public profession of their faith 
in Christ, and twenty-five to be received by letters 
from other churches. How seldom is it the privilege 
of a single church to receive into its fellowship, at a 
regular communion occurring at an interval of only 
two months from a previous one, which was also sig- 
nalized by a large ingathering, so great a number of 
those who have newly passed from death unto life, 
and become — publicly and before the world — disci- 
ples of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ ! 

An occasion of so much interest was appropriately 
celebrated with joyfulness and thanksgiving. In 
commemoration of the event, the pulpit was beauti- 
fully decorated with flowers — which, if there were 
still altars for sacrifice, would be the most beautiful 
and the most touching offerings that could ever be 
laid upon them; while behind the desk, and facing 
the company of converts, was hung in cloth the 
inscription, " For ye were as sheep gone astray, but 
are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of 
your souls." The Eev. Dr. Lyman Beecher sat in 
the pulpit, a venerable witness of the scene, remind- 



324 

ing one of Summerfield's picture of " Jacob leaning 
upon his staff. 55 Five rows of pews, extending in 
semi-circular form around the pulpit, were occupied 
exclusively by the candidates. The edifice was 
crowded to its utmost capacity in every part, includ- 
ing aisles, passages, doorways, vestibule, and pulpit- 
steps, while hundreds of persons, notwithstanding the 
rain at the time of the beginning of the services, were 
unable to obtain admission within seeing or hearing 
distances. 

After the usual opening invocation and singing, the ■ 
pastor read the long list of names of persons pro- 
pounded for membership ; which brought tears to 
many eyes in the congregation, as relatives and 
friends were found to be upon it, including in some 
instances almost entire families, with many parents 
and children, brothers and sisters, born at the same 
time into the kingdom of God. It was almost like 
the reading of a page out of the " Lamb's book of 
life." 

Two verses of Doddridge's hymn were then sung, 
beginning — 

" happy day, that fixed ray choice." 

The union of three thousand voices in a hymn of 
praise, to two hundred of whom, gathered around the 
pulpit, it was a " new song in their mouth," was so 
solemn and inspiring, that there could have been but 
few in the house not affected by it. 

The usual brief ceremonial of admission was then 
performed, consisting in the reading of the " articles 
of faith," and the " covenant with the church," to 



god's witness to christian fidelity. 325 

the converts standing, and their bowing assent — in 
the baptism of such as had never before received the 
rite, of whom there were thirty females and twelve 
males — in the reading of the covenant to those 
received by letter — and in the welcome act of fellow- 
ship by the church, expressed by the members rising 
in their seats in token of admitting their new brethren 
into their number. 

It should be mentioned that on Thursday evening 
previous to the communion, tw T enty-three of the can- 
didates were baptized, at their own request, by 
immersion. The ceremony w r as performed by Mr. 
Beecher, in presence of a crowded assembly, in the 
Baptist church in Pierrepont street. 

The opening exercises were concluded w r ith singing 
the three remaining verses of the same hymn, which, 
thus divided, is admirably adapted to such an occa- 
sion — beginning with the third verse, 

" 'Tis done, the greatest transaction's done ; 
I am the Lord's and He is mine." 

A sermon was then preached, which, owing to the 
exercises that had already preceded, and to the com- 
munion which was to follow it, was unusually brief, 
and of which — from both the general interest of the 
occasion, and of the discourse itself — we give an 
unabridged and complete report as follows :] 

" Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge 
of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the sta- 
ture of the fullness of Christ ; that we henceforth be no more chil- 
dren, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doc- 
trine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they 
lie in wait to deceive ; but speaking the truth in love, may grow up 



326 god's witness to christian fidelity. 

unto him in all things, which is the head, even Christ ; from whom the 
whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every 
joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of 
every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in 
love."— Eph. iv. 13-16. 

This is addressed to those who were but just enter- 
ing upon a course of Christian discipleship ; and it is 
peculiarly appropriate to an occasion like this. This 
morning God hath caused the gates of this temple to 
be thrown open, to receive as many as would consti- 
tute a new and large church ! Such a day as this has 
never before dawned upon this Christian brother- 
hood. 

This church is but eleven years old. It has been 
blessed with five seasons of peculiar religious growth. 
They have not been at the expense of intermediate 
seasons. Much has lately been said of revivals ; and 
many have derided them as rare and occasional 
freshets of feeling, in churches that ordinarily have 
none. That this is sometimes the fact is indisputa- 
ble. But it need not be. A revival of religion is 
not an abnormal state. It is based upon natural 
laws. Like all other true states, it will be sound and 
beneficial, or imperfect and mischievous, according 
to the knowledge and skill with which men employ 
the great and stated agencies of Truth. 

Five revivals have been experienced in eleven 
years in this church. Not only has this not been the 
case because the intermediate periods were unspiri- 
tual and declining ; but there has been a continual 
growth in the spirituality of the church, and each 
revival has lifted the church higher. And when the 



god's witness to christian fidelity. 327 

special social religious element has subsided, it has 
not left the church cold, hard, insensitive, and fruit- 
less. For, if you except the communion season which 
follows the summer pastoral vacation (and at which 
we do not aim to receive members) there has been 
scarcely a communion season in this church for years, 
at which persons have not been received from the 
world. And there have been awakenings and con- 
versions more or less frequent during every year, and 
during every month, from year to year. Eleven 
years ago this month, this church was formed with 
twenty -five members. To-day it stands up to praise 
God with the grateful hearts of 1,377; and of this 
great company, 673 have been received from the 
world, and upon good evidence of conversion. 

You must not uncharitably regard this as boasting. 
I have no time for that; I have a higher end in 
view. 

I wish it to be remembered that this church has 
had its whole life and development during a very 
critical period of American history. The Gospel of 
Christ, in every age, has a new work to perform, a 
new growth to develop, new applications to the ever- 
changing phases of society to be made. I need not 
tell you through what a memorable and eventful 
series of changes God has brought this nation. 

In preaching the Gospel to you, I have taken it for 
granted that my duty was to preach a living Gospel, 
to living men, about living questions. I have not 
confined my attention to one subject. 1 have 
preached Christ as the fountain-head of all spiritual 
life, and the perfect exemplar. I have taught you 



328 god's witness to christian fidelity. 

that a deep, inward spiritual life, begun by God's 
Spirit, and daily nourished by God's personal pre- 
sence, is the foundation of all true Christian morals. I 
have taught you that love to God and to man is the 
characteristic element of all true Christian reforma- 
tory labor. And you will bear me witness that I 
have anxiously, and ten times, yes, a hundred times 
more than anything else, taught, labored, and be- 
sought that you prepare yourselves for all external 
work by faith in Jesus Christ, by humility, by zeal 
tempered with discretion, by fervent sympathy with 
each other and with the whole brotherhood of man- 
kind. And I have incessantly stimulated you to 
work in an atmosphere of love. 

Thus prepared, I have sought to inspire you with 
higher ideals of life in every one of its elements ; 
with a higher notion of personal character ; with a 
nobler sense of true manhood ; with a purer and 
deeper way of personal living; with a richer and 
higher idea of the family state; with more noble 
habits of secular life. I have searched the family, the 
store, the shop, the office, the street, the ship, the 
farm, with the lighted candle of the Gospel, and 
sought to develop in your mind the idea of a sym- 
metrical Christian character, both contemplative and 
executive, both spiritual and philanthropic, both 
domestic and public. I have not forgotten things 
personal in things domestic, nor things secular in 
domestic truths, nor your public duties by any over- 
scrupulous ecclesiastic and church relationship. And 
in the fulfillment of this work you know very well 
that I have neither neglected public questions nor 






god's witness to christian fidelity. 329 

yet intruded them so often as to give them dispropor- 
tionate importance. I have called you to believe 
the deep and fundamental truth of Christ's atone- 
ment, on the human side of it, namely, that men are 
unspeakably precious and valuable beyond all esti- 
mation before God ! I have said that the meanest 
and lowest creature on the globe is of transcendent 
dignity, and has rights sacred as the throne of God. 
For, what shall measure the worth of a creature for 
whose salvation Christ would die? One drop of 
Christ's blood is worth a globe, though it were one 
orbicular diamond. Souls are the jewels of God, not 
metals or stones. 

I have taken hearty and earnest part in the strug- 
gles of our day for the great Christian Doctrines of 
Human Liberty, and I have led no unwilling church 
into the conflict. In this matter (pardon me if I 
speak of myself) I have determined to have no 
interests, no reputation, and no position or influence, 
aside from these great truths. I have committed my 
soul to God's keeping, and have neither asked nor 
cared what men might think, or say, or do. Too 
thankful to live in such a day, and to work in such a 
field, I have only feared that my sight might grow dull, 
my heart grow feeble, and my hand become weak in 
this work so dear to the heart of Christ ! As Christ 
has embraced the human soul in his own, so hath he 
taught me to call all men my brethren. And I have 
preached, lectured, written, and gone forth unhesi- 
tatingly and before the whole people, to bear witness 
to the great Gospel of Christ in the one preeminent 
and transcendent application of it to the great pulsat- 
ing, living interest of this age and nation. 



330 god's witness to christian fidelity. 

Now, why have I said all this ? For two reasons. 

First, Because God has raised up this church as 
seal and testimony. It stands before the nation as a 
church consecrated to Christ, not only in a genera] 
way, but as a church that bears an unfaltering wit- 
ness to Christian Reform. It stands before the world 
for Temperance; for Liberty and against Slavery; 
for Humanity and against all oppression in trade, in 
commerce, or in civil relations. And what has been 
God's testimony? 

Has this been a church split and divided by intes- 
tine quarrels ? For eleven years your church meet- 
ings have been open to the freest speech. And I call 
you to witness that there has never been a difficulty 
so large as a man's hand, nay, so large as a finger, in 
this society or church ! We have gone through all 
discussions of the most perilous and exciting ques- 
tions, and all men have had unrestrained liberty, and 
yet love has not been quenched. And we stand this 
day a living brotherhood. You love me. I love 
you, most heartily. And you love each other, and 
dwell in more than peace — yea, in great joy and 
gladness together. And it is a thing that has become 
noticeable, and noticed, that there is in this congre- 
gation a spirit of general and undissembled love. 
This is God's blessing and God's witness to the right- 
eousness of your cause ! 

Moreover, while you have been faithful, in some 
degree, to Christ's work among the poor, see how he 
has set the seal to it by the repeated revivals sent 
among and upon you ! To those who ignorantly 
denounce you for not preaching the Gospel, we 



GOD S WITNESS TO CHRISTIAN FIDELITY. 331 

answer, within eleven years there have been five pre- 
cious revivals of religion here, and many hundreds 
of conversions. 

Is this the history of a church without a Gospel ? 
I declare my solemn conviction, that God has spirit- 
ually blessed you because it was the very Gospel 
which we preached. Noli a descant to the rich, not 
an essay to the refined, not a favoring of the prospe- 
rous, but a Gospel of pity, love, and salvation, tem- 
poral and eternal, to every tribe, race, and class of men 

And I am willing to go before the impartial tribu- 
nal of coming times, and declare that by this fidelity 
to liberty, to good morals, to humanity, to the indis- 
pensable and integral elements of true spiritual 
religion, we have been prospered. 

The other reason that led me to this history, was, 
that I might bear witness, not alone to the reality, 
but to the beneficence of Revivals of Religion. 

They are not the mere alternative heats which 
follow worldly chills. Revivals are founded upon 
natural laws, just as are all other instrumental reli- 
gious elements. They may be wisely dealt with. 
They may be ignorantly dealt with. But they do 
not exist because the church, having been low, seeks 
to equilibrate itself by being unduly excited. They 
belong to the social and religious nature of men, 
gathered together in churches or communities. 

As it respects this church, I bear witness, that at 
each period this church has risen, in consequence of 
such visitations, to a higher level of Christian life, 
and kept it ! The church by each season has risen 
to a higher conception of Christian life, to higher and 



332 god's witness to christian fidelity. 

purer views of Christ, to clearer conceptions of duty 
and usefulness, to greater desire for doing good, and 
expertness in carrying forth that desire. 

This church has been a Christian church, believing 
in the great cardinal doctrines held by evangelical 
Christians in common ; and because it was a Christ- 
ian church it has been a temperance body, a church 
full of zeal for liberty, and incessantly laborious in 
all the great humanities of our age. And yet, it has 
been expectant of revivals, and the grateful recipient 
of them. For, as God gives a great seed-time, and a 
great and general harvest to every year, and yet fills 
uj) the months also, with incidental and perpetual blos- 
soming and ripening of some sweet thing ; so he gives 
to every true and intelligent church constant budding, 
constant blossoming. But, beside that, is grander 
profusion — greater harvests, in which the whole year 
opens its bosom and exhibits its vast richness ! There 
may be a harvest of cockles and chess, but that does 
not argue against true wheat or corn ! There may be 
an autumn for the crab-apple and the bitter sloe, but 
that does not take from the glory of the orchard, nor 
from the exquisite flavor of its superabundant fruits. 

A true course of fidelity thus is seen to stand 
between the two extremes of an empty Christianity 
and a scoffing Infidelity. It rejects the dead sepul- 
chre, amid which inhuman Christians stand praising 
the dust and bones of those men of the past whom 
their pharisaic fathers slew. And it utterly refuses 
to go down to the hard and stony road of Naturalism, 
where the strong men but just subsist, and where, 
when the weak ask for bread, they must give them 



GOD'S WITNESS TO CHRISTIAN FIDELITY. 333 

atones, and for eggs, scorpion doubts. They have 
nothing better to give ! 

And now for the future ! To what have these new- 
comers been called? Are they to-day received into 
your bosom, that they may, henceforth, subside and 
be sheltered from labor, from self-denial, from 
achievement, yea, if need be, from battle unto 
death ! 

Nay, verily ! you have merely begun. Your jour- 
ney is yet to be performed. You have taken your 
staff ; but the travelling is all before you. You have 
entered school ; you are scholars. You have much 
to learn, and everything to practise ; you are just 
beginning. Your experience thus far is but leaven, 
that is to leaven the whole meal. 

The centre of all your aims is to be, according to 
the Scripture which I have read — the construction of 
your own character. You are to build hereafter 
toward the ideal of perfect manhood. " Till we all 
come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge 
of the Son of God, unto a perfect man ; unto the 
measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ." 
Hereafter, your aim is to be the reconstruction of 
your inward and your outward life, so that you shall 
attain to a full manhood — to the pattern and ideal 
of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

Joys are not, therefore, what you are seeking — 
though joys will be yours ; nor sorrows — though you 
will have them. It is not eminent vision that you 
seek. It is not mere zeal, not mere self-denial, not 
mere cross-bearing. These and such other graces as 
are either instruments or the sequences of your true 



334: god's witness to christian fidelity. 

Christian life — you will have. But your aim is to 
be, to build up a Christian manhood — a spiritually 
manly character. "When men build, it is not bricks 
that they aim at, nor stone, nor timber, nor lime, nor 
paint, though they use them all ; they aim at a house. 
" Now, we are no more strangers and foreigners, but 
fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household 
of God ; and are built up upon the foundation of the 
apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the 
chief corner-stone ; in whom all the building fitly 
framed together groweth unto a holy temple in the 
Lord ; in whom ye also are build ed together for a 
habitation of God through the Spirit." Our text 
gives the same thought, only under a different figure 
— of the body. Men do not seek to develop them- 
selves in the hand alone, nor in the foot, nor in any 
one member. They seek the life of* the whole body. 
And so you are called, not to be happy, not to be 
peaceful ; you are called, not to suffering, not to self- 
denial, not to cross-bearing. Though all these things * 
come upon you, they are merely instruments with 
which you are to build up a Christian manhood, in 
all its symmetry and perfection. 

That manhood, although it is to be based upon 
your natural faculties, is a great deal more than the 
mere unfolding of these faculties. There is to be 
unfolding, and then a training to a model — which is 
Christ. And this does not mean -a training to any 
mystic and impossible identity with God, in the 
greatness of His peculiar spiritual being ; but' a train- 
ing to those elements of feeling which Christ mani- 
fested — to those aims which he accepted — to those 



god's witness to christian fidelity. 335 

practical elements of life which he exhibited. Christ 
is your model and teacher. You are not, therefore, 
to go to the World to ask what is honest, or what is 
pure, or what is true ; you are to go to Christ and 
ask him, and, with that knowledge, to go back and 
live by it — let the world and its customs be what 
they may. You are not to go to your own circle, nor 
to any mere church or teacher ; you are to go to the 
Lord and Saviour. There is his life; there is his 
conduct ; there are his words. There you are to 
resort. If you need help to interpret what they 
mean, ask help of those that are wise in these things ; 
yet your model is not to be minister, nor church, nor 
family, nor community — but Christ ! 

In this work, you are to remember that piety is a 
practical thing. " That ye henceforth be no more 
children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with 
every wind of doctrine, by the will of men and cun- 
ning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive." 
Piety is not an explanation of all possible religious 
truths. It is not casuistry, nor ethical discussion. It 
is the rearing up of your daily life upon the pattern 
of Christ Jesus. To that you are called. Christians, 
like other men, may investigate ; they may reason ; 
they may study ; they may construct philosophies ; 
but this is no necessary part of their Christian life. 
That to which they are called is the finding out of 
truth for the sake of better living — not the finding 
out of truth for the sake of knowing how one fits 
into another. You are called into the church in an 
age of speculation. Everything is up for investiga- 
tion. No book, no custom, no system, no institution 



336 

— though, a thousand years have made it venerable, 
is or can be exempt from search and test. I do not 
wish to warn you against discussion, nor against 
thinking, nor against progress. But that which is to 
make you Christian men is not involved in research, 
nor in philosophy. It lies within the reach of the 
simplest soul — within reach of the most ignorant. It 
is written over and over again, almost in every pos- 
sible form. " The righteousness which is of faith 
speaketh in this wise, Say not in thine heart, who 
shall ascend into heaven? that is, to bring Christ 
down from above ; or who shall descend into the 
deep ? that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead. 
But what saith it ? The word is nigh thee, even in 
thy mouth, and in thy heart, that is, the word of faith 
which we preach." Your Christian character does 
not stand in your being able to solve all curious, 
knotty questions. It stands in your being able to solve 
the mischief of pride in your heart — in controlling 
your selfishness — in making sweet that which is bit- 
ter — in lifting up that which is low — in exalting that 
which is high still higher — in making your whole life 
redolent of Christian love. You are called to this. 
Let other men investigate doctrines and philosophies, 
and you yourselves may, but there is something, 
without these, that stands near enough to every one 
of you : the construction of your own private personal 
character and conduct upon the model of Christ. 
There be many men who will preach another Gospel 
to you ; but the Gospel for you is — Christ in you the 
hope of glory. There are many men who will trouble 
you with the dust of the Bible, its foundation knocked 



god's witness to christian fidelity. 337 

from under it, and the superstructure all taken down ; 
but what you need is not curious speculation, but rich 
and pure living — deep-hearted piety, to build you up 
higher and higher in a true manhood ; to prepare 
you for sorrow and trouble ; to prepare you for 
bereavements and afflictions ; to prepare you for the 
grand passage of death; to prepare you to stand 
immortal in the kingdom of God and of our Lord and 
Saviour Jesus Christ. While, if you are perplexed 
and puzzled with varous questions, you may investi- 
gate freely, see to it that no troubles in respect to 
external circumstances move you from that which is 
the marrow of the truth — Christ your model, and 
a character shaped and fashioned according to his 
example. 

The element in which everything grows and ripens 
in this outward world is that conjoined element 
which the sun gives — light and heat. To-day is 
Nature's great communion day ! Ten million times 
ten million new-born leaves are holding up their ten- 
der hands to greet the sun. What is that which 
evokes them all? What is that in which they all 
live, and are to live all summer long? What is that 
which is to ripen them till they all glow like gold in 
autumn? It is the warmth and light of the sun 
— the great atmosphere with which God bathes all 
nature I Now we are to live in one great atmosphere 
which is to be about us — the atmosphere of Christian 
love. When I speak of love, I do not mean the drops 
that trickle down when we strike the rocky heart with 
the prophet's wand, gushing for the day and then 
dried up ; but love springing up and filling the whole 

15 



338 

heart, always, to overflowing. I mean, first, thou shalt 
love the Lord thy God, and then, out of that same 
fountain, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. 
See how curiously this is here traced — like curious 
figures worked in gold : " That henceforth ye be no 
more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about 
with every wind of doctrine by sleight of men and 
cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to de- 
ceive ; but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up 
unto *him in all things, which is the head, even 
Christ," 

One thing more. What a consummation is this 
to-day ! We stand upon the dividing-point, and 
reach forth into the past and the future ! Who were 
your fathers and mothers? Where the village in 
which your infancy nestled? What has been the 
course and history of your life ? Look back from the 
point and privilege of to-day ! How many prayers 
are now answered on your appearing here to-day ! 
How many tears, shed like dew in the silence of the 
night, are now made radiant, like dews when the 
morning sun rises upon them ! Mothers, that have 
prayed for you, and died praying, and have gone 
home to glory, behold you from heaven to-day ! For 
though we may not know what is going on in heaven, 
heaven knows what is going on upon earth. And 
they that are redeemed behold you, and bless God 
with double joy for your joy to-day. What tempta- 
tions have you escaped and left behind you forever 
and forever ! What evils have you turned yourselves 
from ! What a life have you abandoned, and what 
a glorious life have you entered, upon ! 



god's witness to christian fidelity. 339 

Now turn and look the other way. What is to be 
your history ? Some of you are to be poor ; but you 
have that which is worth more than riches. Some 
of you are to be obscure ; nay, he on whose head 
Christ hath put his hand, can never be other than 
illustrious! Some of you are to have a hard and 
burdensome way in life ; but no burden is comparable 
to the cross, and he who has learned to carry the cross 
of Christ, can carry the globe itself after that ! Some 
of you perhaps are to go forth upon the ocean, and to 
die, and be buried in its waves. Some of you are 
to go among strangers, to fall down in the forest 
where no man hath been, and where there will be 
none to wipe the death moisture from your fore- 
head. But the Lord Jesus Christ hath said, " I will 
never leave you nor forsake you." Die where he 
please, die when he please, he dies unto life who dies 
with Christ ministering to him. 

And now, my dear Christian brethren, I cannot tell 
you with what joy I receive you, one by one. 
Although I have been so busy that I could not sit 
down to take the luxury of joy with each one of you, 
one after another — for you came too fast for that — 
yet I propose to myself a better time with you in 
heaven than ever I shall have upon earth. But to- 
day let me pause in my work ; let me sit down with 
you to-day in the bower of Christ's love ; and let me 
be happy, and be ye happy, as you and I shall taste 
the bread and the wine for the first time in your lives, 
to-day. No such bread has ever grown as that which 
you shall taste to-day ! No grape was ever crushed 
of such precious life-blood as that with which to-day 



340 

we shall symbolize the blood of Christ Jesus, shed for 
the remission of your sins! O children of Christ, 
new-born! O disciples of Christ, new-learned! O 
heirs of glory, expectant of heaven ! — I bid you God 
Speed ! And if ever in after times you are carried 
into temptations, if ever you are waylaid by secret 
enemies in your own heart, if ever you are driven 
hither and thither from your steadfastness — wherever 
you may be in the dark hour — I bid you remember 
this bright and radiant morning, and this joyful con- 
secration which you this day have made ; and if in 
that hour of darkness there is nothing in the present 
to sustain you, draw from the magazine of the past, 
and let memory nerve you to stand steadfast and 
faithful unto the end ! And when we shall have passed 
what most men call the river, but what has become 
by faith the rill of death — scarcely wetting the palms 
of our feet, while we walk across singing triumphs all 
the way over ; — if you go before I do, greet me ; if I 
go before, I shall look back for you, and reach out 
joyful hands from among that multitude that shall 
stand to greet you when you come to your Father's 
kingdom. By and by we shall be with the ransomed 
of the Lord, and there, crowned with eternal joy, we 
shall lift up our voices forever and ever in praise of 
him who hath this day loved us, and given himself 
for us. Amen ! Amen ! 



THE PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY.* 

The ability of the missionary society to do good 
abroad, depends very much on the opinion enter- 
tained of it at home. Whenever a difficulty occurs 
there, it must be removed. And there is such a 
difficulty now. There are some individuals whose 
faith is so strong that they always give them- 
selves up to their ff elings without reasoning. There 
are others who follow their heads first, and only 
give liberty to their hearts afterward. First, it was 
necessary with them that the head should see clearly 
and reasonably what was to be done, before their 
hearts were permitted to get up much steam. These 
are, after all, the most useful men in this cause, as 
in any other. Now, is this work of evangelizing the 
world a divine work ? If it is divine, how shall we 
explain the great hiatus in its progress? Eighteen 
hundred years ago it commenced, and made glorious 
strides toward completion ; but then it seemed as if 
the great command had been suspended for ages, the 
command given by Christ before his ascension, " Go 
ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every 
creature." Why had not the work gone on ? When 
the apostles, with the fiery tongues of Pentecost yet 

* An Address delivered at the Anniversary of the A. B. C. F. M., 
May, 1847. 



342 PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

burning on their heads, went forth, the nations fell 
before them like withered grass before the autumnal 
fires. But our progress is like that of snails. Theirs, 
like that of lions. Hath God forgotten? His arm 
then stretched forth with might, has it grown weary ? 
Or was the success of the apostles' preaching and 
labors merely the result of human enthusiasm, which 
has its ebbing and flowing, its action and reaction, its 
periodic times ? Has it died away through so many 
centuries, and have we at last raised it to a merely 
temporary resurrection? Are there any marks of 
divinity about the great scheme ? 

When the Gospel was first preached, the im- 
mensity of its work can scarcely oe conceived by us 
at the present day. The apostles had not only to con- 
vert men, individual men, but to convert the world. 
The Gospel was to infuse its leaven into all that men 
had done in the world, into all their laws, their man- 
ners and customs, their social and domestic rela- 
tions, their political institutions, and the whole frame- 
work of society. These, too, were all to be divinely 
baptized, just as much as the men themselves. "We 
must not suffer ourselves to be deceived by low con- 
ceptions of the work which had to be done. Reriiem- 
ber the words of Christ himself. The kingdom of 
heaven was to be like leaven which a woman took 
and hid — hid in three measures of meal. Now, when 
you take leaven, and put it into the meal, you do not 
see anything like a spontaneous fermentation. It is 
hidden — you cannot see it, nor can you see its opera- 
tion until the fermentation is complete. In like 
manner Christ came. He put the leaven into three 



PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 343 

centuries, and there it was hid, working and work- 
ing under the surface, invisible to the eye, until by 
and by there was a little breaking forth here, and a 
little there, and then, when the results began to ap- 
pear, men, having lost the connection between cause 
and effect, said, "Whence is this?" They had lost 
sight of the leaven, it was placed there so long ago. 
We must remember that this meal was placed in a 
pretty large dish. It was the whole world. When 
Christ came, the world was four thousand years old, 
and its progress from the first had been steadily up- 
ward in all intellectual and manual branches ; but this 
growth had taken place under the influence of de- 
praved hearts — of selfishness, of pride and of cruelty. 
The Gospel was now to undo and overlay all that bad 
hearts and bad understandings had been doing in the 
world for these four thousand years. It had not 
only to convert the men in the world, but the world 
itself. Go to a corrupt village — some God-forsaken 
spot, where all is vice and iniquity, and convert one 
man ; let everything around him continue depraved 
and degrading as it was before, and with this evil 
influence constantly working upon him, what will be 
the result ? May be he will stand — yes, that's the 
word, stand / but he will not travel. Thus, suppose 
that, after a great portion of the Roman empire had 
been converted, the old Roman priestly government 
had been suffered to remain, with the old heathen 
worship, the old social customs, the old laws, and 
everything else as in its pagan state, why, these 
mounted batteries of theirs would have swept the 
flanks and rear of the Christian army perpetually. 



344 PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

There would have been no gradual melioration of the 
world. It would have stood, perhaps, but a converted 
man must not only stand, he must grow in grace. 
If it were God's plan to work by miracles, the con- 
version of the world had been as easy as the creation 
or the flood. But he intends his truth to work its 
way by the natural operation of those laws by which 
the mind of man is governed. Was this change, a 
change which was to be wrought in Religion and 
Politics, in the capitol and the forum, in literature 
and the laws, in marriage and manners, in the study 
and in the shop, was all this to be the work of time, 
or of a day ? Go to some of the most polluted pur- 
lieus of this city, take thence a boy who was literally 
born in sin, the son of the vilest of parents, a youth 
who has been trained and graduated in iniquity; 
suppose that it is discovered that he is related to 
some one of your high families, let one who is a gen- 
tleman and a Christian take him from his filthy den, 
wash, literally wash, shave, and shear him, dress him, 
brings him into his family and adopt him for his own. 
Suppose, too, that it is with the boy's own consent, and 
he says : " I will be to you a son." Is he as yet really 
changed by all this ? Only in external things. He 
has yet an imagination which must be gone through, 
all its vile and reeking passages explored and cleansed ; 
and you must pour into his mind the riches of know- 
ledge, of the laws, of morality and honesty, delicacy, 
purity and truth. His whole sphere has to be changed. 
You cannot take such a one, clean him and dress him, 
give him a long moral lecture at nine o'clock at 
night, and expect him to get up a thoroughly changed 



PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 345 

man in the morning — no, nor in a year. If, begin- 
ning at the age of sixteen, the work has been com- 
pleted by the time he is twenty-one, the work has 
been done quickly. If, in this time, yon have scoured 
out those sewers of his mind, and converted them into 
channels of God's pure and refreshing grace — I say 
again you have done the work quickly ! Now, if it is 
such long labor with one boy, with all the influences 
of Christianity breathing around him — if, from the 
nature of the mind itself, under even the most favor- 
able circumstances, the change must be so slow, what 
length of time will it take for a whole world ? A 
world, too, where wickedness was organized and with 
its gigantic front, and black heart festering in corrup- 
tion, said to the Gospel, " we will have none of you," 
— a world which was that darkness into which the 
Gospel was sent, and the darkness comprehended it 
not. The leaven must be hid within three measures 
of meal, and it will take its own time to work. 

Sometimes the best way to reform is to destroy, 
as in the case of weeds. Sometimes defects could be 
cured by making additions or taking away obstruc- 
tions or superfluities, by purifying and cleansing, 
without destroying the fabric itself. But when the 
edifice is old, and badly built in the first place, when 
every crack and cranny is overflowing with vermin, 
all scouring, and patching, and painting, is labor 
thrown away; you must pull it down, stone from 
stone, and then, when these stones have been tho- 
roughly cleansed, you may, with fresh mortar, con- 
struct a new and noble dwelling. Now when the 
old heathen government presented its huge front to 



346 PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

the first attack of the Gospel, with its doors barred, 
its ramparts mounted, its windows guarded, and all 
its avenues fortified, you might as well preach to the 
front of Astor's Hotel, and expect it to drop tears of 
penitence ; you might have assaulted it in front and 
rear, and bombarded it from year to year, and all 
without securing a surrender. But did you ever see 
a stream meet a sturdy rock in its course, how it parts 
and flows, one channel on this side and another on 
that ? *So the stream of the Gospel ran around the 
fortress of paganism. But there was another work 
going on. For while the waters ran on, gurgling like 
music, they were gradually sapping the foundations 
of the mighty citadel ; buttress after buttress gave 
way, tower after tower sank down to rise no more, 
until at last the whole structure fell in hopeless ruins. 
So has it been in Europe. Revolution after Revolu- 
tion, change after change, wars after wars, constantly 
swaying backward and forward. 

I once knew a student of Religion, who took up 
Mosheim's " Church History," and on finishing it, 
said: "Well, if this is your religion, I will have 
nothing to do with it ; why, it is nothing but fighting, 
fighting, forever and always fighting !" But only 
go into a field of wheat and examine the grain. 
You are delighted with the long green leaves and 
the beautiful golden grain. — Suppose you see it by 
and by cut down, and after being soundly thrashed, 
stowed in bags, and taken to the mill. There, it is 
thrown into the hopper, it goes between the mill- 
stones, and on appearing below, you are astonished 
at the result. Where is now all the comeliness, and 



PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 347 

grace, and wondrous mechanism, and bending beauty 
of the original grain ? All gone ! This seems very 
hard, yet every housewife could tell you that you 
cannot make bread without it. Thus it was with the 
old society. It was full of rough stones and jagged 
rocks, savage customs, cruelties, superstitions, lusts, 
bad laws, vile manners and customs, and how could 
all this be molded for Christ? The voice of 
history said, by attrition, by wars, revolutions, and 
commotions of every kind. These did the grind- 
ing up, just as in the flowing of torrents and streams 
the rough stones are worn smooth. These wars and 
revolutions, he knew, were called civil and politi- 
cal, and not religious. But did not God know 
all about them ? Did not his prophets foresee them, 
and does not his hand guide them for the fulfillment 
of his purposes? Then they were religious. Nor, 
if you regard the laws of the human mind, had this 
progress been slow. It led through war and blood- 
shed, but it must reach its consummation. Has any 
such consummation taken place ? Draw the contrast 
between our day and the apostolic time. 

One hundred years after the death of Christ, where 
were the arts, painting, poetry, sculpture, architec- 
ture ? Where were learning, refinement, the civil 
law, the influence of the court, the money and com- 
merce — the very warp and woof of society? — They 
were all on the side of heathenism. The symbol of 
Christianity was then the empty cross — empty 
because Christ, who had hung thereon, was ascended 
up to heaven. Now that 1800 years have passed, 
where is heathenism, with all her pomp and pride 



348 PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

her strength and royal robes ? She is fallen into the 
last stage of muttering decrepitude. Whose fleets 
are those that whiten every sea ? Whose arts, and 
arms, and wealth are those that astonish and rule the 
world ? Whose are the schools and colleges, the 
learning, the wisdom, the treasure of the earth ? All 
in the hands of Christians. It seemed, too, that the 
richest temporal blessings had always followed the 
nations that had the most spiritual life. This was 
the oft, repeated promise of the Bible, and every 
finger-board of history points to the contrast. Christ- 
ianity now stands triumphant in the world ; her 
whole solid front is formed, and her face is set as 
though she would go up to Jerusalem. And what 
has been done to cause this ? Why, all the questions 
have been raised that could be raised ; question after 
question has been decided, and the decisions have 
been baptized in blood. This was necessary before 
the Gospel could get full swing at society. Hitherto, 
men suffered from intervening obstacles. They were 
brought up to hear with government ears or parental 
ears, or to look at things through this lens or that of 
prejudice ; but by and by they were coming to 
listen with their own ears, and look without lenses — 
without any diverting or distorting medium, at truth. 
It was objected, that the churches were so divided 
and agitated, that new sects were starting up as 
thick as mosquitoes, that new societies and new- 
fangled notions of every kind were multiplying in a 
fearful ratio. What of it? While the Lord God 
omnipotent reigneth, the end of all this cannot be 
doubtful. But there was one thing to be noticed. — 



PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 349 

Ostensibly, all these agitations and novelties had but 
one sole end in view, one object at bottom ; the 
improvement of the human race. Not an infidel but 
is compelled to do this before he can obtain a hearing. 
When was ever the like of this seen in the world's 
history before ? Why, this is the very foundation 
principle of the Bible itself! And is this what the 
old, selfish, proud world has come to ? She that used 
so scornfully to smite the face of the preacher? — Is 
Saul among the prophets at last? God works on 
patterns of such vast size, that we cannot see them. 
And we should learn to look on all obstructions and 
trials, persecutions, sufferings, as only momentary 
sorrows. They cannot last long. Along the banks 
of the Mississippi, here and there, may be seen a 
backward eddy, but who would, therefore, think the 
whole huge river had ceased flowing onward ? So, 
from the time of the apostles, though there had 
been backward eddies in the stream of the Church, 
yet in every period of hundreds of years, might be 
marked a distinct flowing onward of the main tide, 
until now it can never be stopped so long as God 
lives ! The question is no longer, whether the con- 
summation will come, but when? As things are 
now, we lend not only the Bible, but we lend the 
influence of our churches, our schools, town institu- 
tions, laws, hospitals, commerce, stores and shops, the 
whole spirit of our society to the evangelization of 
the world — for everything is more or less an instru- 
ment of Christianity. By this incalculable influence 
are we backed. "When we strike with puny arm, the 
blow is accompanied by a rebounding stroke from 



350 PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

all Christendom. We have gained momentum and 
rapidity, and can now go through a revolution, 
changing public sentiment from selfishness to benevo- 
lence, in twenty-five or thirty yeass. In fine : those 
laboring in the field must have a faith above the neces- 
sity of seeing the consummation. We know that the 
influence of Calvary can never die. I maj r die in 
the wilderness, and you may die on the sea ; but the 
road to heaven is as short from India as it is from 
Indian^, and when once in heaven we shall see a 
much better sight than Moses saw from the top of 
Pisgah, and every one may gaze on it who has done 
one jot or one tittle to advance the work. Whisper 
it then into the ears of your children, that " the field 
is the world !" Ye who are bringing up your own 
flesh and blood to delight in dress, in worldly aggran- 
dizement, in wealth, in ambition, in honor, have you 
not seen what the Lord is doing ? Have you not seen 
that his service is becoming the path to honor? that 
working for the world, is the shortest road to promo- 
tion in our day ? Teach your children to give up 
their soul and body and strength to their master's 
service. Thus shall they be nearer to God and God 
to them. Say unto him — " Lo ! here are our child- 
ren I" Bring them up to believe that they must not 
live for themselves, but for others. May God breathe 
the richness and fullness of this spirit over his uni- 
versal Church. 



DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES.* 

It is not possible for Christians to have come to 
these anniversaries this year, without a solemn sense 
of the presence of God moving in the affairs of the 
world, with a majesty and revealed power transcend- 
ing the ordinary measure of the Divine Providence. 
He is now speaking, as only God can speak, by the 
voice of fear, by the pangs of terror, by the shakings 
of revolutions, by wars, and by rumors of war. Every 
man who is accustomed to read the word of God 
with his eye upon the times, as its best interpreta- 
tion, and who reads the times in which he lives by 
the illumination of God's Word, must be aware that 
we stand upon the eve of great things, either for good 
or for mischief, and if for mischief, only for greater 
good by and by ; for, when God sows trouble, it is 
the seed out of which he means to reap righteousness 
in the end. 

There is no more any quiet in all the earth ; there 
is no longer anywhere apathy ; there are almost no 
places on the globe where men are torpid, except in 
Tract Societies; and every land, every continent, 
every race, every nation, is stirring as forests shake 
when winds are moving upon them. All men are 

* An Address delivered in Dr. Cheever's church, New York, before 
the (Boston) American Tract Society, May 12th, 1859. 

351 



352 DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 

looking out to know what things are about to befall 
the earth. In our own way, we, too, in this happy 
land, are agitated. "We are not stirred up by war, 
nor alarmed by rumors of war. We are not shaken 
by revolution, nor shattered by intestine dissensions ; 
although many hearts among us are hot. Passions 
are wild here, as in other lands ; great interests are 
at stake ; mighty conflicts are waged ; and yet, the 
laws are unbroken, the peace of the State abides 
sure, tl*e household is serene, secular affairs flow in 
their ordinary channels, deep and strong as the flow 
of rivers. 

What is the reason that those causes which in other 
lands break out into wars, with us produce only dis- 
cussions ? How is it that we settle by our breath, 
and by ink, those interests which abroad are settled 
by tjie sword, and by the crash of wasting artillery ? 
Why do not those wild and tumultuous elements 
which in other lands rend communities as earth- 
quakes crack the earth, bring revolutions to us ? 

Because God has taught us upon this side of the 
ocean that liberty, which cures evils, also prevents 
them. Discussions in schools and in popular assem- 
blies is better than all diplomacy and crafty states- 
manship for the interests of peace ; for where the 
tongue is tied, the sword is free. America binds up 
the sword by giving the tongue liberty. It is our 
faith that liberty does not belong alone to the hand 
and to the foot, but to the thoughts, to the conscience, 
and to the tongue to give forth what conscience and 
the understanding prompt. Therefore it is, while 
emperors, and kings, and little kings, and priests, and 



DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 353 

little priests, are being tossed up and down as ships 
or chips are tossed on the broad ocean of storms, 
we, agitating deeper questions, are preserved in quiet. 

I know that there are some men who fear the 
results of discussion among us, and predict national 
rupture and disunion. Men there are whose keel is 
fear, and all whose ribs are cowardice, and whose 
whole life is but a quaking voyage of apprehension. 
They are always about to sink. The function of their 
life is gone if there be no ill-omened auguries darken- 
ing the future. Some men there are who sleep on 
this matter of disunion. They wake on it. ' It is 
their food at morning ; it is their noonday meal ; 
they sup upon it. It is their Sunday devotion, and 
their week-day horror. Disunion ! You might just 
as well fear that the continent would break in two 
because running rivers cleanse their waters o:ct its 
back, and the restless ocean l$ips its sides, as that this 
Union will break in two because men wage wars of 
opinion, and in free discussion bring all interests to 
the arbitration of reason. 

Indeed, I fear that this people is too selfish ever to 
break asunder. Our danger is not in disunion. The 
devil has too large investments in this land to admit 
of disunion. There is nothing that Satan would gain 
by it — much that Christ might. Why, then, are we 
not in danger ? Simply because we have learned to 
trust the people, and to make them trustworthy by 
intelligence, by moral education, and by the unre- 
strained, yet regulated use of their rights as free men.* 
Other lands make the individual weak, to make the 
State strong ; but we teach and believe that the 



354 DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 

strength of the State is in the strength of its individ- 
ual members. We put trust, not alone in collective 
man, but in the individual man. And that we may 
not be deceived, by the whole force of our educa- 
tional institutions and our political arrangements, we 
seek to make the individual man, the land over, 
trustworthy. 

Our nation, by its organic political institutions, is 
but a continental debating society. Our newspapers, 
and winged books, daily bear before every indivi- 
dual of the land every question that affects the wel- 
fare of the State. Our people are invited, and 
provoked, to the most searching scrutiny, to the for- 
mation of their own independent opinions, to the 
fullest expression of their convictions, and to the 
utmost liberty of waging moral battle for that which 
theji deem right and just. And when, out of this 
universal activity, out of the conflict of interests and 
judgments and experiences of a whole people, final 
results are obtained, they take the form of laws, and 
walk among us supreme, not simply by the enact- 
ment of legislators, but supreme by the convictions 
of an intelligent people. 

I would that this lesson of the freedom of discus- 
sion and its benefits had been learned as perfectly by 
all as it has been by some ; or, rather, as perfectly by 
some among us, as it has been by all the rest of the 
community. But it would seem as if some men 
gained education only by the loss of common sense. 
There are thousands in whom prosperity and intelli- 
gence have wrought a conceit which makes them 
distrustful of the common people. They are arro- 



DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 355 

gant, contemptuous of those beneath them in social 
position, and stand together in classes, with mutual 
flatteries and a common conceit. They are bound 
together in a common emptiness, as the staves of a 
barrel are bound together around the vacuity of an 
unfilled centre. Nor have I ever before seen a more 
remarkable instance of the contempt with which con- 
ceited men look upon free discussion, than that which 
was exhibited upon the platform of the Tract Society, 
at its recent anniversary, on the boards of the Opera 
House in New York. Whatever prejudices have 
hitherto existed against the morals of an opera house, 
must, since that platform held such actors, receive 
double force ; and I am sure that no ordinary play, and 
no opera, bad even as Don Giovanni itself, can have 
a more mischievous effect upon the popular mind, 
than the shameless exhibition which took place on 
that occasion, and by the reverend and legal actors. 
There it was that one of the most distinguished civil- 
ians of New York was pleased to inform the audience, 
in a speech preliminary to the gagging of that audi- 
ence, that a deliberative body was not a safe place for 
the discussion of grave questions* The Reverend 
Daniel Lord it was — for so I read his title in the 
report of the Tribune, though when he took orders I 
am not informed — the Reverend Daniel Lord de- 
clared that the excited feelings of deliberative bodies 
and popular assemblies were not favorable to investi- 
gations of truth. The mouths of the lions among 
whom ancient Daniel fell were not shut half so tight 
as the mouths of those among whom the modern 
Daniel fell. 



356 DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 

When I looked around, and saw that almost every 
other man in that assembly was a grey-haired man ; 
that hundreds of them were pastors inured to de- 
bate all their lives — men who had given their 
thoughts both to books and to the discussions of liv- 
ing men — an assembly, the average age of whose 
members could not fall short of fifty years, and then 
heard this eminent legal gentleman, himself a grey- 
haired man, to whom impetuosity and fire seemed 
anything but congenial, descanting upon the danger 
of being consumed by the wild-fire of deliberative 
assemblies, I could not but think that there was just 
about as much need of sending fire-engines to grave- 
yards to put out tombstones, as of repressive 
measures in such an assembly to extinguish the con- 
flagrations kindled by free discussion. 

That the Tract Society should ever have needed 
that any should remind them of their duty to the 
poorest among the poor, and the most ignorant 
among the ignorant — four million American slaves — 
is itself enough disgrace. That when the voice of a 
Christian people, sounding louder and louder every 
year and coming up from twenty States, like the 
sound of many waters and mighty thunderings, 
demanding that the Society, which professed to 
express in its publications the full truths of the 
Christian religion, should give utterance to some 
religious truth bearing upon this most serious and 
most grievous evil of our times and nation, they 
should stop their ears, and taking counsel of sinister 
interests, refuse to bear their testimony ; that every 
year dumbness should be defended by them as a 



DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 357 

Christian virtue, and moral cowardice pleaded as a 
duty, was enough to bring up again into our ears 
that solemn denunciation which eighteen hundred 
years ago made Jerusalem tremble — " Woe unto 
you scribes, pharisees and lawyers I" 

And now, upon this day, in compact of evil, stood 
again, in this extemporized temple, priest and law- 
yer, determined to justify their own recreancy, and 
to forbid other people the rights of that free speech 
which they had guiltily refused to employ. And this 
anniversary meeting of the Tract Society had for its 
primary object, this one thing — to gag men, and to 
prevent free discussion. They dreaded honest men's 
tongues. They knew that if those that were there 
gathered together, had had the right to pass in 
review their conduct, in the light of God's law, in 
the light of God's providence, in the light of sober 
Christian reason, they could no more stand up, tough 
as they are, broadspread and rooted in prosperity, 
than the mightiest oaks can stand when God sends 
thunderbolts from heaven upon them. 

And so they called not this year, as last, the special 
pleaders of the clergy, but the tricksters of the law, 
prepared with every mean device of caucus and 
political manoeuvre, to anticipate and ward off free 
speech, and shield themselves behind this enforced 
silence. Not one word was allowed to be said at that 
meeting upon those questions which the Almighty 
God has sent upon this nation ; which, in spite of 
wrath, and leagued resistance of men of might, and 
wealth, and worldly wisdom, he has, for twenty-five 
years, sunk deeper and deeper in the hearts of men ; 



358 DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 

with which he hath already wrought a revolutions of 
opinion, and by which yet he will change the face of 
affairs in this whole land. None of those things which 
you think, which I think, which all men are thinking, 
which they themselves, per force, think, were 
allowed to be spoken, but only pettifogging things, 
technical things, managing, wire-pulling, caucusing 
things. Their object was to keep men from talking 
who had something earnest to say, and let those men 
talk who desired to say nothing. It was, therefore, 
a plea against fullness, richness and substance of 
moral conviction, in favor of emptiness and pretence. 
And it became very evident that the time had come 
when this [Boston] American Tract Society, which 
had priority in the field over the other that held there 
its disgraceful Anniversary, should again resume its 
independence, and, in appropriate methods, express 
the Christian sentiment of the Church in our day. 

The Boston Tract Society has been, like some old 
gentleman retiring from business, leaving to his sons 
the conduct of his affairs ; and yet, always, he keeps a 
sharp eye upon their management. When, at length, 
he perceives that their prosperity is turning their 
heads, and that they are running the concern into im- 
minent perils, he assumes again into his own hands the 
lapsed management. And so it is time that this So- 
ciety should come forward again, and say to these 
young men in the Opera House, " You are scarcely 
competent to conduct the religious literature of the 
Church." 

But, before I speak further, allow me to call your 
attention to some of the views uttered upon the occa- 



DUTIES OF KELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 359 

sion of the late Anniversary, by the chief speaker, 
and the most specious one, Daniel Lord. The follow- 
ing are his words : " As to the donors " — speaking of 
the contributors of the Tract Society, he says — " As 
to the donors, they give their property to the charity ; 
it is an entire gift, parting with their right as pro- 
prietors. After a thing is given, every man, woman, 
and child knows, that the giver can no longer control 
or direct it. If, therefore, all those who have con- 
tributed to make up this fund from the beginning of 
this Society, even if the venerated dead could be 
raised to be present, they could have no right to in- 
terfere with or change the administration of the fund. 
They gave it away. But for what purpose, on what 
plan did they give it ? Ascertain this, and you ascer- 
tain the character of the property and the plan of its 
management. Learn on what plan it was solicited 
and received, and then the property is to be protected 
and devoted to this plan. And every consideration 
not only of law, but of justice and morality, of honor, 
religion, and gratitude, secure its management in the 
very way and to the precise object intended. It is 
thus eminently a trust property. The Society does 
not own it for itself. If all of its members could be 
collected together, and should agree to apply it to 
their own use, such an attempt would shock, and such 
an act be idle. Nor can they deviate in its use or 
management from the plan on which it is given, for 
the same reason." 

Here let me say that with all the apparent fairness 
of this statement, it is thoroughly deceitful, for it 
mentions the object or purpose for which these funds 



360 DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 

were contributed, and the plan of management, as if 
they were one, and the same thing, and the words 
purpose and plan are used as convertible terms, 
bearing equivalent meanings; whereas, no distinc- 
tion can be more important, no distinction can 
touch the very marrow of things more really than 
that which exists between the object for which funds 
are contributed, and the plan of administration by 
which they shall be used for that object. Mr. Lord, 
however, speaking of the objects and purposes for 
which they were given, goes on to discuss, not what 
those objects are, which is the very question at issue 
between him and us — between him and the indig- 
nant community — but, by a dexterous and quiet 
change, proceeds to discuss the questions of society 
management. He proceeds thus : 

" The plan of this charity is contained in its written 
constitution ; and, first, let us consider who are its 
beneficiaries. They are the ignorant, the unenlight- 
ened, the needy, over the whole country. And how 
are they to receive the benefits ? By the circulation 
of religious tracts. Circulation may fairly be used as 
a name to represent the beneficiaries. The object of 
the charity is not to declare the principles of its man- 
agers or members ; not to discuss or settle controver- 
sies ; not to declare for or against slavery ; but to en- 
lighten its beneficiaries by the circulation of tracts. 
This is the limit of its action, on the plainest reading 
of the paper." 

Let the public, then, ponder this declaration made 
by this eminent attorney, in the presence of the man- 
agers of the American Tract Society, at its Anni- 



DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 361 

versary meeting, in the Opera House. Let every 
man in the United States ponder this received, and, 
by the management, uncontradicted, declaration that 
the object for which the funds of the American Tract 
Society were solicited was not the discussion or settle- 
ment of controversies; was not the declarations of 
the principles of its managers or members ; was not 
to declare for or against slavery; but that it was 
simply the mechanical business of circulating tracts 
without regard to what those tracts contain. If this 
specious plea of Mr. Lord means anything, it means 
that tracts are to be circulated by the Society with- 
out regard to the character of their contents, after 
they shall once have become tracts. But where are 
tracts born ? What is the origin of a tract ? Who 
makes them ? Who generates them ? Who is their 
father? Do they grow on trees? Are they dug out 
of catacombs and pyramids ? Are they, like gold and 
silver, like diamonds and pearls, things created from 
the foundation of the world? And is the American 
Tract Society but a vast catapult, built to fire these 
foreordained and prepared missives and missiles into 
the midst of the community ? Is the American Tract 
Society, according to Mr. Lord, analogous to the 
United States Mail service, receiving into its leathern 
pouches already-written letters, with which the gov- 
ernment has no right to meddle, and in whose con- 
tents it does not concern itself, and whose sole busi- 
ness it is to circulate them, and deposit them at the 
points to which they are directed ? Is the American 
Tract Society, then, a vast religious Express Company, 
which is to receive packages of tracts and books, and 

16 



362 DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 

circulate them ? And is this the business of the Tract 
Society, not to make tracts, not to express great reli- 
gious truths, not to develop great principles in their 
relations to the actual human want in the times in 
which we live ? Is it the object of the American 
Tract Society merely to circulate something ? This, 
certainly, is the position that Mr. Lord seems to 
take. 

!Sfor t have we heard one indignant protest from any 
member of the Executive Committee, or of the man- 
agement, of the Tract Society. If such things are 
right before a jury ; if it be deemed right to gain a 
temporary victory for one's clients, at the expense of 
fact, and from any Courts of Justice, it certainly will 
not be deemed right by the reflecting and religious 
community, for a man to stand upon the religious 
platform of a prominent benevolent society, and to 
declare so deceptive and so false a thing as that the 
funds of this Society were solicited, and were origin- 
ally given, for the purpose simply of circulating tracts 
without any regard to the contents which they con- 
tained. On the other hand, nothing was more uni- 
versally well understood than that the American 
Tract Society was organized for the purpose of pre- 
paring tracts as well as circulating them, which 
should apply the great principles of Divine truth re- 
vealed in the sacred Scriptures, to the actual wants, 
to the errors, to the sins, to the experiences of man- 
kind. That the management were to judge what 
was expedient, may be true ; but that the manage- 
ment, in the very nature of the trust committed to 
them, were forbidden to discuss principles, and to de- 



DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 363 

clare their own views of moral truth, is an assertion 
so monstrous, so infidel to all faith in Scripture, and 
to religion itself, that I marvel that so many men, 
that knew better, did not stop their ill-advised advo- 
cate on the spot, and correct a misrepresentation 
which, in the end, cannot fail to be most damaging 
to the interests of these special pleaders and petti- 
fogging managers. 

According to this doctrine, then, if smuggling 
should become a practice along our whole northern 
coast, and maritime churches should have smuggling 
deacons, and smuggling ministers, and smuggling 
members, the management of the American Tract 
Society would have no right to declare their views in 
respect to the moral character of this act ; and unless 
they could have tracts already grown, on this subject, 
hanging on the bushes, or wrapped up in the cere- 
ments of the past, they would have no right to 
declare or discuss the Christian principles which gov- 
ern this subject ! When the American Tract Society 
issued the most searching and fearless tracts, discuss- 
ing the etils of intemperance, they transcended their 
power, and abused their trust, according to their own 
attorney ! They had no business " to declare the prin- 
ciples of its managers or members" on this subject. 

When any great evil in the growing light of 
Christianity is lifted up by the providence of God, 
and made the mark at which the Church should 
address its moral power, the Tract Society cannot, 
except by an abuse of their trust, if this doctrine be 
true that we have heard, discuss the nature of the 
evil, or the duties of Christian men respecting 



364: DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 

it, nor in any wise touch it. " Their business," says 
Mr. Lord, " is not to discuss, but to circulate." And 
so, instead of a body of intelligent Christian men 
gathered together to give universality to the truths 
of the Gospel, we have but a vast charitable corpora- 
tion, collected together for the mere mechanical 
purpose of circulation. The Society is to know no 
more what passes through it than a fanning machine, 
that knaows neither the grain which it saves nor the 
chaff which it drives away. But we quote again : 

" However proper, then, a treatise might be, how- 
ever suitable, if it could be circulated to do good, 
yet it cannot be circulated, it cannot be printed at 
the expense of the fund, without a breach of trust. 
What would be said of printing a tract in a language 
which those to whom it was to be sent did not under- 
stand ? And yet how does that differ from printing 
tracts, which those to whom they are addressed will 
not receive. Tracts on slavery might be able in their 
teaching ; tracts against polygamy the like ; but how 
idle to attempt to send the latter to the Mormons, or 
the former to other parts of the country, where they 
would be excluded. And this circumstance, of 
whether they could or could not be circulated, must 
be determined as a preliminary question of fact by 
the managers of the Society." 

Let every honest Christian man in these United 
States consider this abominable doctrine that the 
duty of a Christian Tract Society, in circulating the 
truth, is to be judged and limited by the wishes of 
corrupt and wicked men. If wicked men are willing 
to receive light upon their wickedness, the Tract 



DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 365 

Society is permitted to send tliem knowledge ; but if 
wicked men do not desire that light should shine into 
their darkness, Mr. Lord declares, that without a 
perversion of their trust, the Tract Society cannot 
send them unwished-for and unwelcome Christian 
truth. He declares, most explicitly, that the preli- 
minary business of the Tract Society is to ascertain 
whether men are willing to receive the truth of 
Christ, and that if they are not, they are in duty 
bound, as administrators of a solemn trust, to with- 
hold that truth ! 

Was this, then, the doctrine of that Christ who 
came, not to bring peace, but the sword ? "Was this 
the example of that teaching Saviour who confronted 
the whole priestly rabble, and lawyer crew, that then, 
as now again in our day, held the holiest places, that 
they might pervert them only to the basest uses ? 
Was this the example of those apostolic heroes, who 
went abroad, followed by mobs of infuriated men ; by 
enraged mechanics, whose business was interfered 
with by their high morality ; pursued and thrust at 
by wandering mountebanks, whose gains they 
destroyed by restoring their victims to health and 
sanity ? Was this the spirit that breathed through 
those men, who in every age, have been found 
worthy of the name of Christ — teachers, confessors, 
martyrs, saintly pastors, and unsubdued preachers, 
who have borne solemn testimony against all wicked- 
ness, and brought upon themselves endless mischiefs, 
because they would not forbear, and because they 
would cast upon the unwilling face of darkness, the 
whole effulgence of the light of God ? And yet, 



366 DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 

Mr. Lord dared to say — and there was not one priest 
upon the platform that chose to contradict the decla- 
ration — that tracts on slavery, and tracts against 
polygamy, and the like, must not be sent to those 
that w&re guilty of either sin, unless it was known 
beforehand that these sinners were willing to receive 
them ! 

And this is what the Tract Society, with all their 
high-sounding pretences, with all, their paraded piety, 
and all* their ostentatious conscientiousness, have at 
last led the Church to ! That truth of Christ which 
was revealed to be, not the suppliant and the slave 
of men's caprices and appetites, but the master of 
their conscience, the lord of their faith, the supreme 
arbiter of their lives — that truth which is God's only 
vicegerent upon earth, open-browed, clear-eyed, and 
with a tongue that speaks in every language the 
same things, and with divine authority, is, by this 
last declaration of the American Tract Society, 
through their attorney, to ask i permission of the 
intemperate before it declares the sins of intemper- 
ance ; to ask the consent of the incontinent before it 
rebukes, by the blaze of Gospel chastity, the foul 
corruptions of licentiousness ; to ask the hard hand 
before it preaches the duty of lenity and mercy to the 
weak ; to ask the Sabbath-breaker's permission before 
it issues tracts on the sanctity of God's day ; to ask 
the gambling and the racing crew whether they may 
print tracts against the special immoralities to which 
they are liable ; to ask the thief whether they may 
circulate tracts upon dishonesty ; the robber, whether 
they may set forth the claims of justice; for, says 



DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 367 

Mr. Lord, " Tracts on Slavery might be very able in 
their teaching, tracts against polygamy the like, but 
how idle to attempt to send the latter to the Mor- 
mons, or the former to other parts of the country 
where they would be excluded." 

But this is not all. Let us, for a moment, argue 
the question upon Mr. Lord's own ground. We 
demand to know by what right it is said that tracts 
will not be read in the South on the duties of master 
and slaves ? How has it been ascertained that they 
will not be welcome ? Have these men taken counsel 
of political firebrands ? Have they taken counsel of 
their cowardice ? Have they taken counsel of those 
men who, long committed against the agitation of 
slavery, are now ashamed to yield, and to own, by 
yielding, that their whole past career has been mis- 
taken ? The proper method of ascertaining whether 
tracts would be read, is to make them, to offer them ; 
and when judiciously constructed tracts have been 
tried, with all kindness and perseverance, and are 
turned back upon the depository of the Society, then 
it will be time to declare that they have been re- 
jected. But to stand upon the precipice of their 
cowardice ; to grow dizzy by the mere looking over 
into the abyss below; to refuse any attempt what- 
ever, practically to test the question — this belongs 
to those peculiar notions of Christian enterprise 
which are characteristic of the American Tract So- 
ciety. 

On the other hand, I declare that there are hun- 
dreds and thousands, and hundreds of thousands of 
men, throughout all the slave States, who will as- 



368 DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 

suredly receive, with gratitude, suitable tracts upon 
this subject, and read them with conscientious 
earnestness for the truth. I declare my conviction 
that men living in the slave States, by ten thousands, 
hate slavery vastly more than do the managers of the 
American Tract Society; are less apologists for it; 
are less indifferent to its wastes and its woes ; are 
more in sympathy with that spirit of liberty in the 
New Testament, which has consumed so much evil in 
the world, and is destined to consume every vestige 
of slavery and of oppression. There are thousands of 
ministers that will circulate tracts written in a spirit 
of Christian love, bearing witness against the selfish- 
ness and the wrong of those that defraud the laborer 
of his wages. Nay, there are thousands of men who 
believe that slavery is a divine institution, who 
yet desire to have the duties of the master more 
thoroughly explored and taught ; who earnestly 
desire to carry themselves toward their slaves with 
some degree of conscientiousness and Christian fidel- 
ity. There is not in these United States, there is not 
upon this continent, there is not on the broad field of 
the world, a province of labor more inviting, more 
urgent, that promises a more abundant remuneration, 
than the slave States of America. Nowhere else has 
the conscience lain so long fallow ; nowhere else are 
men more open to honest truths, spoken in a manly 
way ; nowhere else are men more frank in recanting 
when they are wrong ; nowhere else more fearless in 
doing that which they see to be right. And I believe, 
in my soul, that if instead of our northern doughfaces, 
the management of this American Tract Society could 



DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 369 

be put into the hands of any of thousands of men 
who might be selected from the slaveholders of the 
South, we should have a better expression-from them 
of Christian truth on the subject of human rights, 
than now we are able to obtain from these men, 
whose highest conception of duty seems to be, to do 
right by the permission of evil, to scatter light under 
the direction of darkness, and to establish righteous- 
ness by the consent of iniquity. I will myself stand 
pledged — if any word of mine may be a guaranty — 
that if the American Tract Society will print appro- 
priate tracts upon this subject, in a Christian temper, 
and with Christian fidelity expressing the truth of God, 
I will circulate twenty million pages in one year. 
If the Society will take the offer, I will take the job. 

Mr. Lord then goes on to describe the duties of the 
managers of this property. The life members of this 
Society, together with the life directors, at an annual 
meeting, elect the President, the Vice-President, the 
Secretaries and the Directors. Then these directors, 
together with the life directors, elect the Executive 
Committee. This Executive Committee then assumes 
all the authority and functions of the Society. The 
whole force of the Society dies when they have put 
the Executive Committee into their chairs. In 
respect to this, Mr. Lord says : 

" How ' idle, then, to instruct this Committee ? 
What right have the members, who have exerted 
their power of management by the election, to inter- 
fere with this veto power? But the attempt to 
instruct the Committee assumes to take away not the 
veto of one, but the discretion of all. The plan of the 

16* 



370 DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 

charity has not in it such an inconsistency. And how 
impracticable to execute such a construction of it. 
The publication and circulation of tracts must depend 
on occasions, on emergencies, to be acted upon as 
they rise. It has been wisely committed to a select, 
an elected body, on the American idea of a represen- 
tative system; not on the rash, reckless and often 
arbitrary models of a mere democracy, casually col- 
lected and swayed by impulse." 

True," technically there may be no right in the Soci- 
ety to instruct ; but the American Tract Society every 
year brings its cause into all the churches of the land, 
and professes to act in sympathy with their wishes. 
When, then, at the annual meeting, the Church, by 
its pastors and eminent laymen, come into their 
assemblies, and express their ideas of Christian duty 
and Christian fidelity, shall their mouths be stopped 
by the technical plea that such free speech is an 
unwarrantable attempt to instruct? Are we to add 
to all the other powers of this Executive Committee 
the ascription of sufficient wisdom in their own 
selves ? Are they also to ,be supposed to be infallible 
in judgment? Has Mr. Lord found out, likewise, 
among the other memorable things which he has 
discovered, that the Executive Committee are not to 
be approached, in deliberative popular assemblies, by 
advice, by suggestion, by persuasion, by reasoning, by 
deliberative wisdom ? "When, since the days that our 
colonies sprang up on these shores, has it ever before 
been known that a great religious society, dependent 
upon the churches for its support, should sit without 
rebuke to hear the practice of discussion and delibera- 



DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 37l 

tion in popular bodies decried ? And yet, the 
Managers of the American Tract Society permitted 
Mr. Lord to characterize our American religious 
assemblies in language such as this : 

" A popular meeting, swayed by passionate elo- 
quence, sympathizing in local feelings, would be a 
most unsafe depository of the functions in question. 
It is also likely to be composed most extensively of 
those who reside nearest to the place of meeting, and 
the course of the charity would thus be made depend- 
ent, in a degree, on the place of meeting ; and might 
vary as that should be New York, or Boston, or 
Syracuse, or Rochester." 

And afterward, speaking of the superiority of the 
judgment of this Executive Committee over the 
judgment of the Society that was assembled in the 
Academy of Music, he says : 

" This trust has been wisely committed to a select, 
an elected body, on the American idea of a repre- 
sentative system ; not on the rash, reckless and often 
arbitrary models of mere democracy, casually col- 
lected and swayed by impulse." 

And yet — and no man knows it better than Mr. 
Lord — such is the power of the popular will, when 
that will is based upon information, upon intelli- 
gence, and upon experience, that there is not a court 
of justice in the United States, that can long main- 
tain an opinion adverse to that which has been 
formed by the great court of the million outside of 
itself. The majesty of the decisions of the people, in 
all questions which are within the reach of their dis- 
cretion, overawes all bodies known to our com- 



372 DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 

munity. The United States Senate would not pre- 
sume to pursue, for a year, unless under the merest 
party influences, a course of legislation against which 
the intelligent people in every State should rise up in 
their popular assemblies and protest. There is not a 
State Legislature in all this Confederacy that would 
choose or dare to pursue a course which was known 
to be against the deliberate judgment of the great 
majority of their constituents. There is not a body 
known to our political system that is not compelled to 
hold, and that practically does not hold, in the ut- 
most respect, the known judgment and wishes of the 
masses of men in this community. It is reserved for 
the American Tract Society to stand up in the midst 
of churches, and of a Christian community that in 
immense majorities condemn their conduct, and 
declare themselves superior to such considerations — 
an elected body, by being representative, made 
superior to the rash democracy of popular deliberate 
assemblies, as Mr. Lord is pleased to style them ! 

And before whom were these disparaging words 
uttered ? In whose presence did this Executive Com- 
mittee permit Mr. Lord to arrogate their superiority ? 
Yenerable men there were, that were venerable 
when some of the Committee were born. Men were 
there in scores, whose reading and habits of wise 
reflection have made them as able in statesmanship 
as they have been learned in theology. There is no 
better school on earth in which to accumulate wis- 
dom than the pastor's office ; and from out of discus- 
sions; from studies where they had elaborated 
thought in the calm seclusion of studious leisure, from 



DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 373 

the field where, among men of every temperament 
and of every habit of thought, they had held argu- 
ment; from actual contact with living, glowing, 
sympathetic life, they had come up hither, to hear 
Mr. Lord declare, that the Executive Committee was a 
body so superior that they were not to be instructed 
by the debates and the discussions of such an assem- 
bly as that ! 

It would seem bad enough for the American Tract 
Society to refuse to proclaim a Gospel of liberty, or a 
Gospel of rights to four million of men on this conti- 
nent ; but to attempt to justify their guilty silence by 
decrying and gagging a Christian deliberative assem- 
bly, by undermining the foundations of free speech, 
by destroying faith in the wisdom of popular deliber- 
ative bodies, was to act as oppressors always act ; for 
usurpation never fails to go on to injustice. Men 
whose rights have been taken away from them, are 
always forbidden to complain. The Sceptre and the 
Gag go together, the world over. The American 
Tract Society, after contemptuously refusing to exer- 
cise free speech in behalf of the oppressed, next, and 
characteristically, muzzled free speech and free dis- 
cussion of their own conduct. Every man knows 
that there was never a more ruthless thing done in a 
Christian assembly than that, which took place yes- 
terday. It is bad enough to see the gross and wanton 
injustice of arrogant men that manage the wires of 
political affairs ; but to see a body of Christian minis- 
ters and laymen bringing into their service the sup- 
ple bands of lawyers, springing every parliamentary 
trick and device in the face of free speech, dodging 



374: DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 

issues, and hiding their own moral delinquencies, by 
robbing men of the right of exposing them — this is 
one of the worst things that has ever happened in 
the long annals of degradation and crime brought 
upon us by slavery. In a religious body, among 
clergymen from all parts of the United States ; inx a 
popular assembly, and by men reeking with devo- 
tion, and fuming with prayers, it is odious and dis- 
gusting beyond all reach of language. 

And, now, let the common people of these United 
States understand how this thing stands. According 
to this new construction, the people are to give the 
money ; the Executive Committee are to spend it as 
they please ; and the people are not at liberty to 
advise them, nor utter a word of protest, except out 
of doors. You, who give the funds, if you give as 
much as twenty dollars a year, and think to take out 
a certificate of life membership ; or, giving fifty dol- 
lars a year, if you think to take out a certificate of 
life-directorship, are permitted to go into the Court 
of the Gentiles once a year,* not to influence the 
direction of your funds, but simply, under whip and 
rein, under preconcerted political managements with 
the previous question, and the laying of the question 
on the table, cutting off all debate and explanation, 
are to be permitted to vote for directors and secre- 
taries. If you be only a twenty-dollar life member, 
that ends your function. Like an insect that has 
laid its egg^ when your vote is dropped, you drop, 
too, and are dead. Then the directors are permitted 
one additional step in life. They vote for the Execu- 
tive Committee, and after that they die, too, and are 



DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 375 

to be heard of no more, until the time comes for 
butterflies to fly again the next year, when, breaking 
out of their chrysalis state, once more they may 
shake the wings of ballot, and but once, to drop 
again into the annual slumber. When once the 
Executive Committee are elected, you are at their 
mercy. You are not to say a single word. You are 
not to advise them. You are not recognized as being 
in existence. 

I should delight to be an agent collecting money 
for this Society for a short period. I would address 
the farmers with the usual eloquence of those who 
solicit charity, describing, first, the unspeakable wants 
of the ignorant population of our land ; and next, the 
unspeakable piety of the members of the Executive 
Committee of the American Tract Society ; and next, 
of that mysterious power which God has given to gold 
and silver to bring together the much-needed piety of 
the one extreme to the much-needed ignorance of the 
other. "This is your duty," I should say to the 
farmers, who, with hard toil and laborious economy, 
have been endeavoring, penny by penny, to put their 
sons through the academy or college, that t they may 
make ministers or missionaries of them, or that they 
may become honorable civilians, or intelligent labor- 
ers of any grade — " It is your duty to help in this 
glorious cause of tract distribution." "But," says 
the farmer in his stupidity, " what will become of my 
money if I shall give it — what will be done with it ?" 
"Why, it is going into the Treasury of the Lord." 
"But what treasurer is that who holds the Lord's 
bag?" " Why, it is held by these devout and sainted 



376 DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 

men who pray all day, and almost all night, and then 
deny free discussion on a platform for the purposes of 
the Lord." "But what is to be done with our money ? 
What do they mean to print? What do they mean 
to circulate,?" My friends, I should be obliged to 
say, " You are meddling with matters which do not 
concern you. It is your business to give the money : 
it is our business to spend it. If you wish to know 
how it i§ spent, in due time, after it is all gone, you 
shall find the tracks of it here in our annual report." 

Gentlemen, this American Tract Society is a mul- 
tiform and gigantic mill. It has its run of stones. 
Some are appointed for wheat, some for corn, but 
more for cobs ; and they do not profess to consult the 
will of those that approach their door with bags of 
grain : they simply say to them, " This is what we 
grind in this mill ; if you choose to put your wheat 
into that hopper we will grind wheat ; your corn into 
that hopper we will grind corn; your cobs into 
yonder hopper, and we will give you cob-meal ; but 
we do not profess to be directed any further by the 
will of our customers than we choose. Here are our 
arrangements ; take them if you please. If you do 
not like them, go somewhere else. We shall grind 
just as we have arranged to grind. We will put in 
no new stones, and make no alterations in our mill to 
suit the notions of the people that live hereabouts." 

And so, the American Tract Society say, " Gentle- 
men, pour your pocket-grists into our mill. We have 
arranged how this shall be spent. We shall make no 
changes. We are not to be instructed. We are not 
to be influenced by the wild democracy of popular 



DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 377 

deliberative bodies of old men. It is our business to 
use these sacred funds ; yours only to give us a chance 
to use them." 

And so I imagine that country gentlemen who had, 
with very great pains and self-denial, been able to 
give twenty and fifty dollars, that they might become 
life-members and life-directors of the American Tract 
Society, approached this great city at its recent anni- 
versary, and were present in the Academy of Music. 
They have come, as they fondly supposed, to take 
some part in the administration of affairs. When 
they go to the door of the Academy, he of the red 
ticket is put on one side of the house ; and he of the 
white ticket on the other side ; while he of the green 
ticket is mounted up to the place of privilege upon 
the operatic stage. The business proceeds. Some- 
thing seems continually to be going on behind the 
scenes. There is whispering, and buzzing, and con- 
sultation. A fore-arranged result is to be dragged 
through the assembly. One thing there certainly is 
not to be ; no discussion is to be allowed ; no free 
speech is to take any part in this meeting. At length, 
when the hour has passed, our country member and 
director go out, and, meeting in the passage-way, a 
little puzzled as to what they have done, one looks the 
other in the face, and says — " What did you do on 
your side of the house?" And the other replies, 
" And what did you do on your side?" and both join 
in saying, " What have they done on their side?" 

I will defy anybody on earth to tell what has been 
done, except that two men have been duped, and a 
third has got the money. And all this misconduct 



378 DUTIES OF KELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 

takes place under the sweetest names of religion 
and devotion. These men propose no mischief with- 
out a holy sigh ; they violate no right without a pious 
groan ; they never decry free discussion without lift- 
ing up their eyes to heaven ; they wrest from us no 
privileges, except with the clasping and holding up 
devout hands in the act of prayer. These are all 
good men, who read their Bibles, I think, until some 
places in them must have become worn out, and their 
contents forgotten. Surely, men must be very pious 
who can endure conduct that would put to shame a 
democratic political caucus. 

I was yesterday urged vehemently to mingle in 
this scene and to speak. But I loathed and scorned 
the offer. Is it for a man like me to play in such 
a scene as that, and watch the sudden opportunity to 
jump upon the stage, there to be shoved or put down, 
as might suit the convenience of the reverend law- 
yers, tricksters, or what-not ? I believe in free speech, 
not for myself alone, but never half so sacredly as for 
him against whom I have exercised my speech. Free 
speech does not mean my right to say what I please, 
but your right to speak back again. If there is any- 
thing in this world as sacred as religion itself, it is the 
right which religion gives to speak of religion, to 
speak of its principles, to apply them to every phase 
of the human welfare ; and if this land and age shall 
stand by and behold the destruction of these most 
sacred rights on the very platform of religious benevo- 
lence, and in the very professed service of religion by 
religious men, then we have reached a crisis indeed — 
a crisis, not of external force, but of decay of inter- 
nal and fundamental principles and rights. 



DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 379 

But these men have mistaken the temper of the 
times, and spirit of the common people. There is a 
public sentiment that will drown out even the Tract 
Society. There is a public sentiment which, if it be 
slow, is slow only that it may be certain and effect- 
ual. Confidence will not be revoked hastily. It 
will not be too eagerly concluded that men once 
trusted have become arrogant in office and corrupted 
by power and seduced by the blandishments of flat- 
tery and success. But when once that confidence is 
withdrawn, it will never return. If, then, there is 
any seeming delay, it is only such delay as belongs to 
the steps of majesty. "When God is throned in 
clouds, and armed with lightning, and approaches to 
judgment and to justice, so sure in his heart is the 
day of retribution, that he needs not to make haste. 
There is no being so certain as God, and none so 
slow ; for, since the days of Moses and the prophets, 
there has never been an age when men, feeling the 
bitter wants of the world, have not been compelled, 
their own patience worn out, to cry, " How long, O 
Lord, how long !" To-day martyrs cry, to-day 
oppressed and suffering patriots from out of dungeon 
vaults do cry ; to-day with million voices not sup- 
pressed, suffering slaves cry out, " O Lord, how 
long !" And yet He dwells in eternity and in 
silence, and takes to himself the infinite leisure of 
eternity. But though he seems to delay, he never 
fails to come, and at length it shall be said, " Our 
God shall come and shall not keep silence." And I 
believe that God will yet mark with the most con- 
dign punishment, those men who, under the name of 



380 DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 

religion, and for the sake of screening themselves 
from responsibilities toward the poor and the op- 
pressed, have violated our liberties and our rights. 
I do not say that these men are not Christians. 
Peter, I suppose, was a Christian when he denied 
his Lord. I hope these men are Christians. But if 
that is Christianity which they practise, they have 
another 'New Testament than mine. 

I turn now to another branch of the subject. For 
the last hundred years, God has been developing in 
this world some of the later and more wonderful 
results of Christianity. First, Christianity acts as a 
power upon the individual ; next, upon men 
in their social relations — setting up the family, estab- 
lishing neighborhoods, promoting refinement in our 
households and in communities. Next, it takes hold 
upon laws and institutions, then, upon customs, and, 
finally, upon the organic forms of society itself. 
And in the mighty conflicts which result from this 
strife of good with bad, of right with wrong, of love 
with selfishness, the very frame of life is often 
shaken, and society itself, broken up, passes away, 
or assumes new forms. Beyond even this there is a 
work which Christianity is developing. Touched by 
its divine spirit, every quality springs up, in each 
age with new branches, and pushes forth blossoms, 
and hangs redolent and glowing with surprising 
fruits. The higher developments of the nobler feel- 
ings begin to embody themselves, and give to life 
not only new ideas, but a before unimagined and, to 
the natural man, inconceivable grandeur and moral 
glory, both in things esthetic and in things ethic. 



DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 381 

Since the world began, it has been the doctrine of 
proud and haughty men, that the weak were made to 
serve the strong; — and as, among lions and brute 
beasts, the fierce and the strong destroy the weak, 
and the race is propagated only from the more stal- 
wart individuals, so this belluine morality has been 
adopted and practised by societies of men. 

The weak have been despised, have been crushed, 
have been pushed down to the bottom, have been 
made to grind in dark places, to work for that which 
they reaped not, to sow in tears, in sorrow, in hopeless 
despondency, that the indolent and the wicked 
above them might reap that which they requited 
not. Nor has this spirit been suffered to take the 
spontaneous form which pride would give it. It 
has come under the organizing power of Philosophy, 
and it has received organic forms, until, now, selfish- 
ness has become legal and regular national and 
organic wickedness, based upon wrong ; and so 
framed into a law and into systems of law, that 
round about this interior Satanic element of cruel 
selfishness has been gathered whatever there was 
venerable in authority, whatever there was impres- 
sive in symbol, whatever there was beautiful in Art, 
whatever there was attractive to the eye, to the ear, 
and to every sense. And men, weak and ignorant 
men! have been taught to clasp with tendrils of 
affection and veneration systems whose very marrow 
and life were the destruction of the poor for the sake 
of the rich, the oppression of the weak for the plea- 
sure of the strong. 

But now, at length, the world has so far grown, in 



382 DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 

God's Providence and grace, that, emerging from in- 
finite confusions and turmoils of pride and selfishness, 
this question is seeking at length for a new adjudica- 
tion at the bar of Christ's heart. For more than a 
hundred years past that which has underlayed all 
movements, that which has, been the rudder of all 
progress, that w^hich has been the animating princi- 
ple of all reform, has been, not, what are the rights 
of the strong, of the wise, of the rich, of the powerful 
in station and rank ; but, what are the rights of the 
poor and the weak, and what are the duties of those 
that are strong to the weak ! By that same power 
which causes the sun to send summer into the soil, 
and wakes from their rude dirt all things sweet and 
beautiful, wholesome things from noxious, clean 
things from fetid, fair and beautiful things from 
waste and homeliness, literature has been taught to 
bring forth new* fruits, and in our age, instead of 
that derisive spirit which characterized the litera- 
ture of England in the days of Pope and of Sterne, 
of Swift and of Dryden, there is breathed into it and 
throughout it the most humane and yearning spirit 
of benevolence! Even kings, not knowing what 
they do (as ships that are side wise swept over an 
unknown current do not know that they are drifting) 
have been obliged to declare humane sentiments 
and to conform, in their policy, to this divine world- 
current. Every nation of the globe, to-day, is mov- 
ing in directions given by this gulf stream of God ! 
Never before on so broad a scale was Christian 
power active in this world. Great as are the fruitp 



DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 383 

of preaching, noble as are the tasks and accomplish- 
ments of self-denying missionaries among the 
heathen, sweet and beautiful as are the aspects of 
Christian life in pure and heavenly families, yet, not 
in any, or all of these, is Christ so manifestly at work 
as in these great world-heavings, in these unrecog- 
nized, but universally felt movements, for the recon- 
struction of society, of commerce, of civil polity, of 
human life itself, upon the basis of humanity and 
benevolence. 

What shall the strong do with the weak ? This is 
to-day the question which God makes Asia to answer. 
With this he questions Africa. With this he cate- 
chizes every fractious nation of Europe. With this 
question he is shaking America. Nor is there yet 
found one nation on the earth, though their Christi- 
anity has dwelt with them so long that their cathedrals 
are hoary with age and their altars burnt out with 
perpetual fires, that has yet learned to answer this 
sublime interrogatory of ages ! 

The duty of the strong to the weak ? Great Britain 
says that the duty of the strong to the weak is to 
compel them to perform remunerating industries! 
Europe declares that the duty of the strong is to 
make the iron hand of power yet stronger, and to 
hold in more absolute subjection the now pinched 
and cramped masses of the people. Africa, low, 
brutal, animal, hears the question, but knows not 
enough even to comprehend its meaning ; and God 
speaks to that benighted continent, as a child might 
speak to the ocean — calling out for its father, its 



384 DUTIES OF KELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 

mother, or its companions; and only the ceaseless 
beating of the surf upon the shore, wave thundering 
after wave, is its answer ! 

All the world over, the power of Christianity has 
made the more intelligent stronger and continually 
stronger ; but as yet, it has left the others relatively 
weaker than before. The top of society has gone 
up, but the bottom has not followed it in any due 
proportion. 

And now, hath God answered this question ? Hath 
he declared his own mind ? or anywhere recorded those 
letters which are never to be effaced, those letters 
declarative of his will ? When God gave the law to 
antiquity, he wrote it upon tables of stone, amid the 
august terrors of Sinai's top. "When he gave to the 
world his later law, he wrote upon the living heart 
of Christ in the silent majesty of Calvary ! And in 
his Example we learn our duty. 

"Was it, then, to build himself up, that the Infinite 
descended to our finite condition ? Wandering among 
ignorant and wicked men, was it for his own glory 
that Christ groped ? Was it that which he sought in 
buffetings and mockery of a trial, in the fatal hour of 
condemnation, in the slow cross-burdened walk to 
Calvary, in the hours of unutterable anguish, which 
not even the sun itself could behold ? Was it in the 
silence of the rock sepulchre, garden-loved, that he 
sought the elements of his own aggrandizement ? Or, 
was it rather to teach us by the whole power and 
majesty of his example that he that would be chief 
must be servant of all ? Was it not to teach us that, 
though rich, for our sokes he became poor, that we, 



DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 385 

through his poverty, might become rich ? And, 
henceforth, is not the world's doctrine this Gospel, 
that Power, Refinement, Intelligence, "Wealth, Sta- 
tion, must hold themselves subject, under the law of 
love, to the uses of all that are unfortunate, of all that 
are weak, of all that are trodden down ? The sun 
hangs in glory over the earth, not with its rays to 
beat down, but, by all the power of its attraction, to 
draw forth from out of the homely soil and dirt 
growth of infinite things of beauty. And God hangs 
above all things to draw all up out of weakness and 
wickedness toward him. And every man of mankind 
is to take his superiority as a level, an engine by 
which he must draw all lesser men up to or toward 
his condition. There is but one Father Universal ; 
there is but one Family ; there is but one Brother- 
hood ; and throughout all the boundless races and 
infinite numbers of men, there is not a stranger, an 
alien, a foreigner ! Ye be all brethren and members 
one of another ! 

Is not this one of the many mysteries that are dis- 
closing themselves from the sublime act of Christ's 
incarnation and atonement ? If on earth there be one 
thing memorable, which, wanting no monument, shall 
lift up its undiminished head through eternal ages, 
itself its own monument, is it not that act by which 
the God of glory bowed down his Almighty head, 
and slept beneath all life and in the bosom of Death, 
that he might destroy the one and give eternal power 
to the other ? No angelic head radiant with reflected 
glory was that which pillowed itself upon the rock ! 
The moral and the marvel of this sacrifice required 

17 



386 DUTIES OF KELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 

that men should know that the Absolute, the Ever- 
lasting, the Universal Father, lived and moved by a 
law of love, which made him willing minister and 
servant of the weakest. And by the voice of his own 
life, by the voice of Calvary, by the death, and by 
the resurrection of his son, by the ever-living care 
and fostering love of Christ advanced to be a Prince 
and Saviour in Heaven, God is now teaching man- 
kind, unwilling scholars as they are, that the duty 
of the strong toward the weak is to love them, to 
take care of them, to educate them, to strengthen 
them, to lift them up with the might of their strength 
to the very height of their own privileges ! And 
so, men shall be helped, and you, helping them, 
shall be thrice blessed yourselves; for, it is more 
blessed to give than to receive ! and, power gone out of 
you for others returns to you again from their hearts 
increased a thousand fold ! 

Interpreted from this sublime example, what is the 
morality of the British Empire, whose sway in India 
has been almost purely commercial, and which has 
looked at men almost only in their relation to the 
opium-gardens and the indigo-fields ? Judged in the 
light of Christ's precious example, what monarchy in 
Europe, for five hundred years, is not condemned, 
and what regnant policy, or statecraft, what blood- 
enriched territory, is not blackened and made odious 
by the serene teaching of Love ? 

And we, of America, with suffering heart and 
vailed faces, can any abhorrence be greater, to any 
Christian, than that which we feel when we behold 
the latest born of Time, most blessed, best taught, 



DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 387 

richest in the heritage of all great things that mar- 
tyrs, and confessors, and dying patriots have be- 
queathed to the world, have been most recreant, 
most cruel, most haughty to the poor, most despotic 
to the weak? It is in America that old Roman 
slavery flourishes as it never flourished in its own 
native soil. The Imperial sceptre was milder than 
the Democratic oppression! But God has not left 
himself without a witness, nor us without a testimony 
that he means to save us ! Beginning far back in 
years, he has pressed unwelcome truths upon this 
nation with growing urgency ! At first, this truth 
of Christian humanity was born among us with 
infant face, and with the weakness of a babe. It 
seemed easy to overwhelm it. And strong men 
rushed upon it. Herods there were, in every church, 
in every sect, in every State, in every legislature, in 
every neighborhood, up and out, seeking this child 
Jesus to destroy it ! But all of these, again, slew 
without slaying ; and he grew in stature, until, now, 
Christ, represented in his poor and despised ones, is 
stronger than all politics, than all churches, than all 
commerce, than all civil affairs, " and the govern- 
ment shall be upon his shoulders !" 

Near fifty years have passed since this sublime 
movement. In that time ten thousand men, repent- 
ing that sooner they did not see the light that 
dawned over where the young child lay, have borne 
noble testimony ; and the living words of God's truth 
have been spoken in ten thousand pulpits; books 
have begun to march in long procession; news- 
papers, in turn, have given their power to this cause, 



388 DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 

until, at length, popular enthusiasm inflamed, the 
whole community has risen up, and is bearing 
earnest and solemn testimony to the rights of the 
enslaved, and the duties of Christian men and patri- 
ots ! In this long conflict, that Society, which was 
originated by holy men, for just such solemn work 
as this ; which was erected to be a platform from 
which the artillery of the Gospel might sweep every 
evil ; which was organized that, by the power of 
organization, those tougher iniquities which defied 
individual labor might find, in its organic power, 
more than a match ; this great, this mighty asso- 
ciation, has stood to be traitorous to its own great 
trust, to admire itself, to laud its own fruitless 
piety, and, surveying its presses, its loaded, groaning 
shelves, and its pious officers, to cry out, is not this 
Great Babylon which I have built ! If there be on 
earth, at this day, one sight more melancholy or 
more shameful than another, it is the sight of an 
American Christian Association, established for no 
other end than the propagation of Gospel moralities, 
that, for half a century, has refused to bear a testi- 
mony in behalf of four million men, overrun, and 
infested with every immorality which oppression can 
breed, weighed down with every evil which it is the 
intent of the Gospel to alleviate, destroyed by every 
malignant mischief from which the Gospel was 
meant to be a salvation. To withhold bread from 
starving cities, medicine from dying hospitals, rescue 
from wolf-imperilled children, would be nothing com- 
pared with that stately and inhuman phariseeism 
which, for twice a score of years, has beheld without 



DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 389 

one pulsation of pity, without one outreacliing of the 
hands, without one utterance of the voice, this great- 
est error and wickedness known in our land and 
generation. If the crime itself be hideous, the 
excuse is yet more nefarious. The Tract Manage- 
ment have refused their supreme duty under the plea 
of preaching the Gospel ! Thus telling the world 
that there is a Gospel that can be preached devoid 
of pity for the poor, empty of all sympathy for the 
oppressed, deaf to the groans of slaves, and dumb to 
all the petitions of the degraded and neglected ! It 
were bad enough to despise God's poor, but to 
excuse it by a plea which maligns the very heart of 
Christ, and slanders the spirit of his Gospel, is a 
crime yet more unpardonable ! 

It is a pain and piercing to my heart that the 
Church of Christ has not been found, with banner 
advanced, far beyond all other bodies, leading on 
the world to a victory. I can never forget that my 
father and my mother were members of Christ's 
Church upon earth. And, even if Christ himself 
had not sanctified the Church, this would have been 
enough for me, that my father's and mother's hearts 
had made it sacred ! 

But when both Father in heaven and father on 
earth have left their memories in the bosom of the 
Church, she must receive from me all that the 
yearning heart, the deepest sensibility, and the most 
earnest love and enthusiasm can bestow. If she 
might only be true to her trust, what matters it what 
becomes of you or me ? If the name of Christ and 
his Church might glow with the renown of heroic 



390 DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 

humanities and difficult duties faithfully done, let us 
be cast aside, as old and shattered armor, or as the 
rind of golden fruit, peeled off that some longing lip 
might suck the pulp ! "Willingly would I lie down 
by the wayside ; willingly would I have my hand para- 
lyzed and my tongue silenced ; willingly would I sub- 
mit to that most grievous and bitter calamity to an 
active man, to stand uselessly aside and see the world 
go past in all its movements of enterprise and adven- 
ture, if only by such sacrifice of myself I might behold 
achievement, courage, enterprise, and heroic endea- 
vor, in the revered Church of Christ ! How long 
shall her ear be drowsy ? How long shall she sleep 
in the garden where Christ, in anguish, sweats drops 
of blood ? "When will she wake, if not to save her 
Master, at least to go with him to trial and to disgrace, 
out of which shall come victory and glory ? 

What, for more than thirty years, has been the 
agitation of this land? What has been that deep 
undertone sounding up through all the clash of busi- 
ness, and over-sounding all the voices of politics, and 
all the voices of the pulpit ? It has not been the 
swell of the ocean, driven of storms upon our coast ; 
it has not been the sighing of the wind through our 
western forests — this deep thunder-toned diapason, 
rolling through the land, has been the sighing of 
the slave; and four million voices have lifted up 
before God prayers and pleadings which have shaken 
the very throne of mercy. Throughout all this time 
the Church heard that voice, but would not know 
that it was the voice of God, speaking through the 
afflictions of his despised ones. But he hath rolled it 



DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 391 

more and more audibly upon the ear, and at length 
all the land has consented to listen, and to under- 
stand its meaning, and to yield to its petition. 

A great revolution has taken place in the opinions 
and feelings of this whole nation. In my own day a 
mighty conflict has risen, passed on, and ended vic- 
toriously for the right. I remember the days of early 
mobs. I remember when anti-slavery sentiments 
were spoken but in whispers, as guilty things. I 
remember when to be known as an Abolitionist was 
to be disowned. I stood to see Birney's printing 
press broken to pieces at Cincinnati, and dragged 
into the Ohio River, and patrolled the streets armed, 
under public requisition, to defend the dwellings of 
the poor colored population against the ruthless 
threatenings of the mobi I remember when the pio- 
neer lecturers in the antislavery cause were driven by 
un vitalized eggs from place to place throughout the 
"West I remember well the day when storehouses 
were sacked, and dwellings pillaged, in this city of 
New York. I remember when a venerable man and 
minister escaped with his life from his own house 
because he was an advocate of the enslaved. 

"Within twenty years those parties which were the 
most tyrannic have been ground out of existence. 
Those churches that were the most intolerant of free 
discussion on the question of human rights, have 
been overrun by this providence of God, in favor of 
freedom, and subdued to the truth. Synods, which 
acted as dykes, have been overwhelmed and sub- 
merged by the rising flood. General Assemblies, 
like ships leaking on the sea, with all their pumps 



392 DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 

and every device of caulking, have but just kept 
themselves dry, and have been driven hither and 
thither by this omnipotent flood. Those opinions 
which twenty years ago would have shut up every 
avenue of political honor in the North, are now found 
indispensable to the first step of advancement in 
political life. The wheel has turned around. The 
top is the bottom, and the bottom has gone up to the 
top. A moral revolution has taken place upon half a 
continent, and a decree has gone forth judging the 
wickedness of slavery, and establishing the righteous- 
ness of liberty. 

During this whole struggle, the American Tract 
Society, which* was organized to speak God's truth to 
man, has stood and beheld the whole conflict without 
opening its lips, or uttering one single word. 
Churches that were unfaithful have been brought 
into line; States that were recreant have become 
faithful; neighborhoods that were false to liberty 
have been converted to the truth ; institutions that 
scowled, and repulsed her claims, have long since 
embraced the cause ; but the American Tract Society, 
with fatal consistency, from the beginning to the end, 
has stood dumb. Its silence has testified that in 
its judgment there was nothing in the Gospel 
which it was its duty to speak in behalf of the 
oppressed. In all the Word of God there was no les- 
son of liberty of sufficient importance for it to pub- 
lish. In that work which Christ was doing in our 
own age, it would have no part nor lot. Going back 
to the sepulchre, it buried itself in the past, and 
refused to follow the Saviour in all his new works of 



DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 393 

love which he was performing in our midst. The 
Gospel which it has preached has been a historic 
Gospel. But the living work of God, and the might- 
iest work of our time, it has ignored, despised, 
rejected ; and I charge upon this Society the guilt of 
rejecting Christ. It has refused to bear his Cross, to 
suffer with him, to be pierced with his thorns, or to 
tread in his footsteps. If in the day of judgment it 
shall be counted a sin to have spoken for the en- 
slaved, with any potency of voice, no condemnation 
against the Tract Society will be issued, whatever 
may befall you or me. They have never thus 
sinned. 

Had this Society been established for the publica- 
tion of some special class of works, and had they then 
refused to publish works that did not belong to their 
specialty, they had been right. In England there is 
a Shaksperian Society, whose business it is to publish 
only of Shakspeare. There is a Camden Society, 
with their historic specialty. There is a Hansard 
Knollis Society, with their select list. And if the 
American Tract Society had been a denominational, 
doctrinal society, or an ecclesiological society, or any 
departmental publishing association, we should not 
have blamed her that she refused any extrinsic work ; 
but she was organized by Christian men, to declare 
the whole counsel of God on the subject of public 
morals, to this nation. She was organized to give a 
Christian literature, based upon Christian morals and 
Christian truth, to this nation and to our times. 

Under such circumstances, a deliberate and con- 
tinual refusal to utter the truth of the Bible upon the 

n* 



394: DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 

subject of human rights, when millions were clamor- 
ing for knowledge upon this subject, and when God, 
by his providence, was turning all good men's 
thoughts to these things, can be interpreted in no 
other way than as a mighty infidelity to the truth 
committed to their hands. 

And this mighty neglect has been made more re- 
markable and shameful by the particularity with which 
it has reprehended and hunted petty misdemeanors 
and minute transgressions. Upon ordinary stealing, 
it has never feared to declare the whole counsel of 
God ; but the stealing of men, women and children, 
has never yet been counted by it a crime worthy of 
reprehension. To steal a thing has roused their holy 
anger, but to steal a person leaves them quite com- 
placent. The violation of religious days ; the dis- 
regard of conventional religious usage; random 
irreverence or profanity, — these have afforded them 
targets for all their artillery ; but the violation of the 
most sacred rights, social, civil, religious and domes- 
tic, of four millions of men, has called forth from 
them not one single word. This great overgrown 
Society, with a hundred presses, goes out to seek the 
man that chews tobacco, and runs him down, with 
all its authority, for the wickedness of this indulg- 
ence ; but the polygamy of the slave plantation ; 
the customary adulteries of slave relations ; the break- 
ing of hearts in the separation of families ; the 
unbounded concubinage of master and female slaves ; 
the separations of children; the ruthless sales of 
human beings, coupled and catalogued with brute 
animals, — upon all these things it has looked ; and 



DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 395 

though, urged, and besought, and pleaded with, to 
this hour it has steadily refused to open its mouth or 
to say one word. And yet, it pretends to be a Soci- 
ety for the publication of Christian truth and Christ- 
ian doctrine ! 

Do young men and maidens, after the long day's 
toils, see fit to gather together, and dance out the 
hours of night ? The American Tract Society instantly 
arrays against them the moral influence of the Gospel. 
Does some slave-trader, within sound of the na- 
tional Capitol, gather together a band of hundreds 
of slave men, and slave women, and slave children, 
and begin that infernal cofile-dance between the 
slave-pen and the burning plantation ? Against this 
not one word can it find it its duty to speak from out 
of God's truth. If ever, in our day, there was a case 
which called again for Christ to speak and denounce 
the miserable hypocrisy of men that tithed mint, anise 
and cumin, but neglected the weightier matters of 
the law — judgment, justice and mercy — this is the 
one. 

And what is that Gospel which they have 
preached? Suppose that all our Bibles were des- 
troyed, and we were again to reconstruct the 
teachings of God's "Word from the publications of 
the American Tract Society, what Gospel could we 
rear out of them ? It would be a Gospel from which 
would be left out that sublime enunciating sermon 
of Christ — " The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, 
because he hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to 
the poor ; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, 
to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering 



396 DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 

of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are 
bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." 
We could find in it no humanity for the oppressed ; 
no sympathy for yearning, sorrowing slave-mothers ; 
no Golden Rule for slave masters ; no doctrine upon 
national justice. Through the Bible which the 
American Tract Society have given this world, des- 
potism might drive its chariot without a block or > 
hindrance. Along that Gospel road which the Ame- 
rican Trstct Society have thrown up, the most foul and 
flagrant sins that are ever committed by oppression 
might walk unchallenged by any sentinel, unarrested 
by any officer. In so far as that Gospel is concerned, 
which the American Tract Society has spread before 
this nation, John Newton might again open the slave 
trade, unrebuked, upon the coast of Africa. Fleets 
might land uncounted armies of slaves, and vast 
auctions, sundering every natural tie, disperse them 
all over the continent, and lecherous power and rank 
brutality might domineer over the weak and helpless, 
and all forms of dishonesty rising from the petty 
proportion of civil stealing into tyrannic robberies, 
and despotic usurpations of every human right and 
liberty, and yet without one word of warning, one 
word of rebuke, one word of judgment, from that 
Gospel which the American Tract Society has given 
to this nation ! 

And all this vast and wanton neglect is justified by 
the plea that they are ordained not to meddle in 
controversies, and to take sides with parties, but to 
preach the Gospel. Is this Gospel a thing that can 
be preached while every human interest is neglected 



DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 397 

or disowned ? Is that Christ's Gospel that does not 
meddle with living interests ? Is the Gospel a bundle 
of abstract truths, a bouquet of sentimentalities, an 
airy realm of sweet imaginations and heavenly 
visions ? Is there a Gospel of Christ that can be 
preached consistently with the neglect of every want 
in life ? Is there, then, in this world, a Gospel of 
Christ which is nothing for four million imbruted 
slaves that cry day and night before God ? It were 
bad enough to maintain such wanton neglect and 
inhumanity toward the poor ; but to justify it by a 
plea which destroys the charter of our religion, and 
belies the very genius of the Gospel, is a wickedness 
which combines in it all the most malignant traits of 
infidelity. And whatever may be true of the private 
lives and dispositions of the individuals who compose 
the Management of this Tract Society, there can be 
no doubt that they have made the Tract Society an 
engine of infidelity. They have denied Christ ; they 
have crucified him again in his poor ; they have shut 
up their hearts against those things which were 
dearest to the soul of the Saviour ; they have 
propagated the letter, and sacrificed the spirit of 
Christianity. And no defection of doctrine, and no 
mistaken theories of piety, and no enthusiasms of 
moral sentiment, and no malignancies of fanaticism, 
can, in the end, be worse than that fatal dogma which 
the American Tract Society practically teach — that 
there is a Gospel of doctrine which may be separated 
from duty ; that there is a piety without morality ; 
that there is a religious sentimentality disconnected 
from religious ethics ; that devotion may be separated 



398 DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 

from humanity ; and that God will accept prayers, 
and readings, and preachings, and singings, and self- 
denials, in place of mercy, and charity, and helpful- 
ness to the poor, and release to those in bondage. 

If I were called upon to state who most promote 
infidelity, do you think that I should say it was such 
as Theodore Parker ? He is open and above-board. 
We know his whole theory and philosophy. Mis- 
taken as he is, he is not the most dangerous man. Do 
you think, "then, that it is Garrison and Phillips — him 
of the iron tongue, and him of the golden lips ? No, 
not them. Earnest, unswerving, faithful to their 
convictions, they represent the fanaticism of that 
part of the Gospel which the Tract Society has 
abandoned and rejected. Then it must be those 
infamous peddlers of infidel books, that are danger- 
ous. I should just as soon think of calling men dan- 
gerous who peddle cockroaches, and rats and vermin. 
The men who seek such books are spoiled already. 
I will tell you who are the dangerous infidels. Now, 
as in the days of Christ, the men who hide worldly 
hearts behind spiritual sentiments; the men that 
substitute devotion for humanity; the men who 
insist upon sacrifices in place of mercy and justice; 
the men who have a text for every sin of omission 
and commission, and holy precedents for every 
devout neglect ; who make long prayers while devour- 
ing widows' houses ; who lift up holy eyes whenever 
they are about to do a wicked thing ; who pursue a 
smooth selfishness ; and who build themselves places 
of power, and fortify their influence by all the words 
and phrases of duty and devotedness ; these are the 



DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 399 

infidel men who take the garments of Christ to do 
the work of the devil in. These men who profess to 
do the work of righteousness while they impede the 
work of true religion by their shams, stand, in our 
day, where the Scribes and Pharisees stood in Christ's 
day. 

Jerusalem lives its life over again in New York. 
The Temple stands again in Nassau street, and 
the priests and the lawyers may be found there at 
the same arts which priest and lawyer practised in 
the Temple of old. Laws and institutions grow old 
and perish, but the human heart, never; and the 
hypocrisies of inhuman religious men in the days of 
Christ, which brought down his divinest indignation, 
reappear again in every age. As spiders spin 
their cobwebs in kings' palaces, so, in the holiest 
places, hypocrisy weaves its web, and lurks for its 
victims. 

The heresies which Christ feared were not of the 
head, but of the heart — the heresy bf selfishness ; the 
heresy of religious pride ; the haughty indifference of 
those that were in prosperity to those that were in 
trouble and adversity; the neglect of the poor, the 
ignorant, the vicious, the criminal. It was not in the 
Temple that his steps were most found, nor his voice 
oftenest heard. The religious class he made his ene- 
mies, because it was against the religious class that he 
levelled his most terrible denunciations. There may 
be such a thing as religious aristocracy, and contempt- 
uous religious refinement. Devotion has its selfishness, 
worship may become a luxury. And in the day of 
Christ, the arrogance of the priest, the subtle cunning 



400 DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 

of the lawyer, and the conceited spirituality of the 
devout, brought down the most terrible denunciations 
from the divine lips. And Christ taught then a les- 
son just as much needed now, that all religion is void 
and worthless which leaves the ignorant untaught, 
the wronged unredressed, the poor unsuccored, the 
imprisoned unvisited, and the captive unreleased. 
And in the days of Christ, by Christ's own hands, the 
whole weight of the Gospel was pivoted upon human- 
ity in man to man. 

One cannot look upon this ostentatious particularity 
about minor morals in the Tract Society, and this 
persistent neglect of great humanities, without re- 
pugnance. Imagine an army upon our frontiers, 
charged with the defence of the people. All around 
the rude huts of the pioneers primeval forests stand 
unbroken. In their shadows and twilights lurk count- 
less bands of savage enemies. Their flocks and their 
herds are imperilled by wolves and bears. Yenomous 
serpents yet infest the region. Upon some alarm, the 
settlers crowd the fort, beseeching protection. The 
savage foe are upon them. Their houses are burned j 
their crops are destroyed ; wolves suck the blood of 
their herds with impunity ; but no soldier can be had. 
Armed with combs, and searching the heads of child- 
ren, they reply, " We cannot leave these important 
matters to look after Indians." 

Four millions of men cry out that the foot of the 
oppressor is upon them. Four millions of men say, 
" We do not own our wives, nor our little ones. J^e 
are living in N adultery. We cannot go where we will. 
Our bodies are not our own ; our time is not our own. 



DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 401 

Every right is snatched from us. Brethren, come 
forth and help us." But the Tract Society, lifting its 
devout head from its domesticity, plies its fine-tooth- 
comb philanthropy upon quids of tobacco ; upon 
sins of dancing ; upon the transient peccadilloes of 
morality. 

Had the Executive Committee of the American 
Tract Society stood in the place of the twelve Apos- 
tles in the primitive days of the Church, the world 
would have never had a Gospel. Not one man of 
them would have dared to preach in Jerusalem ; 
not one man of them would have taken the buffet of 
an angry world. Some lawyer would have been 
found easily satisfying them that to preach a thing 
which men did not want to hear was throwing away 
their labor. Some Daniel Lord would have risen up 
in their midst, and declared that they had as well 
speak in a foreign tongue as preach things which the 
people did not wish to hear. No Peter would have 
brought on Pentecost in Jerusalem. 'No Paul would 
have risen up, and traversed the globe with a fidelity 
which arrayed against him the wealth, the refine- 
ment, the religion, and the learning of the selfish 
world. 

Think you that the holy Apostles asked leave of 
men to speak? Did these sons of thunder go to their 
mission chiefly careful how to save their own reputa- 
tions ? But had it been these gentlemen of the Tract 
Society, we should have had a new rendering of the 
campaign. The Executive Committee would never 
have preached Christianity in old raging Jerusalem. 
Christ would never have lost his life if he had pur- 



402 DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 

sued the prudent policy of this influence-loving 
Tract Society. The apostles would have grown grey 
in Jerusalem if they could have been permitted to 
preach only what men wished to hear. They were 
persecuted for outspoken fidelity. Christ's last and 
worst offence, and that which was the proximate 
cause of his death, was his unsparing and terrible 
rebuke of that religion which made Devotion a sub- 
stitute for Humanity. The Pharisees were so anxious 
for the Church and its institutions, that they sacrificed 
the very qualities for which a church is instituted. 
And the Tract Society are now on the very moral 
ground occupied by the old Pharisees. It is for the 
sake of saving an institution formed only for the 
spread of Truth they are sacrificing that very Truth. 
For the sake of keeping unharmed an Institution of 
Benevolence, they are refusing the most sacred duties 
of Benevolence. Moral qualities have become less 
valued than the machinery by which these qualities 
were to be propagated ! Under the plea of preaching 
Christ, they are refusing the very deeds which led 
Christ to his victorious death. For the sake of send- 
ing the Gospel all over the land, they have emptied 
themselves of that very courage — of that divine fidel- 
ity — of that tender consideration for the helpless, 
which made the Gospel what it is. In the Apostles' 
hands there was a Gospel of Courage. In the Tract 
Society's hands it is a Gospel of Cowardice. The Tract 
Society means to save its life, and so loses it. The 
Apostles were willing to lose their lives daily, and so 
saved them. It is not what influence men keep that 
makes them strong, but what they give up for Christ's 



DUTIES OF RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING SOCIETIES. 403 

sake. From the Cross and the Sepulchre Christ 
began to reign. Before, he was a man of sorrow — 
afterward, a Prince and Saviour ! The Apostles 
gloried in persecution. Suffering was a badge of 
Fidelity. They carried the Gospel into the world as 
a torch is carried into a cave, bringing down around 
them every creature that could not bear the light. 
That Gospel is now a dark lantern, and the Tract 
Society carry it into the vast cavern of slavery with 
such care not to open it, that every bird of darkness 
sleeps on, undisturbed. Their Gospel is a torch re- 
versed ! Had these tract men been the Apostles, we 
should now be Gentiles, and the whole earth hea- 
thens. 



THE END. 



691*^ 



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Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process^ 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: April 2006 

PreservationTechnologies 1 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION! 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
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